


Something Personal

by heygaymayday



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Ellie (The Last of Us) Angst, Everyone Is Gay, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, Original Character(s), POV Alternating, POV Ellie (The Last of Us), Pre-Seattle, Romance, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:35:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25713646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heygaymayday/pseuds/heygaymayday
Summary: Dina fixes her with a soft, surprised expression; there in the flickering light from the bonfire, it’s enough to make Ellie feel the kind of happy she wasn’t sure she was even capable of feeling. A feeling so big, so good, that she hadn’t been sure it was possible for her to feel it. She had wondered, in the past, if maybe she just wasn’t wired for feeling these kinds of things--deep and pure and good. She’d thought maybe she was just destined for feeling lukewarm, mediocre at best.But Dina proved her wrong, because nothing she felt about Dina was lukewarm or mediocre.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 61
Kudos: 227





	1. It's a New World

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work related to the series "Look Out, Jackson Town"--but, ultimately, it will be a separate narrative. It picks up immediately after the events of Malfunction. Highly recommend perusing those before picking up here.
> 
> As always, feel free to send me thoughts or comments on twitter: @heygaymayday

_**DINA**_.

Dina lifts yet another pumpkin from the ground, heaves it into the bed of the truck, adds it to the growing pile of pumpkins already there.

"Good god, how are they making these things so heavy?" She asks breathlessly.

"Tired already?" Ellie asks, lifting a pumpkin of her own onto the pile, "Totally knew I was gonna win."

"Win _what?"_ Dina scoffs, grabs another pumpkin from the ground.

"The Loading-Pumpkins-Onto-This-Truck contest, obviously."

"I don't remember agreeing to a contest--"

"It's okay, Dina," Ellie dusts off her hands, leans against the metal frame of the truck with an exaggerated swagger, "You don't have to feel bad about losing. It was never a fair fight--I mean...just look at these guns, man." 

She flexes an arm, which does nothing, because they're both in heavy coats that don't allow for the exhibition of _guns._ But Dina laughs anyway, rolls her eyes. She leans against her side of the truck, smiles.

"You know, you're cute when you're doing your whole _ironic swagger_ thing."

"Oh, there's no irony here--do I need to show you the guns again? It's the jacket, isn't it, hold on, I'll take it off--"

"Stop, you idiot--" Dina laughs, leans forward to push her shoulder, "It's freezing, keep your jacket on. Trust me, I'm very aware of, y'know--your arms."

"Yeah?" Ellie asks, with that crooked grin Dina likes so much.

"Yes. They're...very nice arms."

"That's it?" Ellie says, "That's the best you can do?"

"Can I tell you a secret?" Dina says, and she hops up to sit on the open tailgate of the truck.

"I _love_ secrets," Ellie hops up to sit beside her, "Hit me with it."

"You know how I asked you to come over the other day and fix that cabinet at my house--"

"--because you don't know how to use a drill, yeah, I remember."

"Uh-huh," Dina says, and she lowers her voice as she leans a little closer, " _I know how to use a drill."_

Ellie laughs, says, "Can I tell _you_ a secret?"

"Of course."

"I didn't believe you couldn't use a drill. You can take out a clicker with a shotgun but you can't use a drill? Get outta here."

"So you knew--"

"--I had suspicions."

"Can you blame me? Ellie, in my kitchen, with power tools--with _those_ arms? Couldn't pass up that opportunity." 

Ellie laughs; a warm flush washes over her cheeks, and it's so funny to Dina, how she can have so much silly bravado and yet also be embarrassed and self-deprecating. It's an endearing contradiction--which, incidentally, describes a whole lot about Ellie, in Dina's estimation. _Endearing contradictions._

"So...why didn't you make a move, then?" Ellie asks, quieter but still smiling.

Her words manifest as little clouds of vapor in the crisp October chill. It's somehow all the more distracting to Dina, being able to see her breath as it leaves her lips. She was enthralled by Ellie in every month of the year, but _Ellie in October_ was especially preoccupying for her.

Dina shrugs, "Didn't seem like the right time."

"So when _is_ the right time?"

"I don't know--when are you gonna tell me about Utah?"

Ellie sighs, looks away, seems to deflate. 

"You can't keep doing that, you know. Deflecting a question _you_ can't answer with a question _I_ can't answer."

"Why can't you answer it, Ellie? What'd you find in Utah? Why aren't you talking to Joel?"

"It's...complicated," Ellie says, "It's...kinda something personal."

"And, what, I'm too dumb to understand or--?"

"No," Ellie says with a roll of her eyes, "That's not what I said. I just…"

She sighs, looks down at her knees, hands gripping the edge of the tailgate.

"Something...happened. Back when Joel and I were on our way here, to Jackson. And I always thought, from the beginning, that he was lying to me about it. I had to go back to Utah to make sure."

"And?" Dina prods gently.

"And he's a fucking liar," Ellie says, not looking at Dina; she leans forward, elbows on her knees, hands coming together to fidget with agitation, "He fucking _lied_ to me, Dina. Right to my face. For years."

"What was it? What happened? You're not telling me the whole story--"

"Dina," Ellie sighs her name, "Listen, I can't tell you, not right now, and I just need you to trust me, that I have a really good reason."

Dina looks down at the dry, cold ground under them. She thinks about it for a moment, then gives a slow nod. 

"I trust you," She says, watching Ellie's canvas sneakers swing ever so slightly, there over the edge of the truck bed, "You don't have to tell me. But whatever it is, I can handle it, if you change your mind."

"I know," Ellie says, "I'm pretty convinced there's _nothing_ you can't handle."

Dina smiles, gives a skeptical scoff, "I dunno about that. But for what it's worth, I think..I think Joel really cares about you. Like...the kind of _cares_ that people are lucky to get these days. Whatever he did...maybe he had his reasons."

"He's a fucking liar," Ellie repeats with a shake of her head, and Dina can hear it in her voice, that she's about to shut down and walk away, rather than continue the conversation, "You can't understand."

"Alright," Dina says in a pacifying tone, "I get it. I'm just saying... _dads_ are kind of few and far between. I just hate to see you guys like this--"

"He's not my dad," Ellie interjects, "I'm not his kid."

"Fair enough," Dina says carefully; Ellie's never been this defensive and closed off about Joel before. Whatever happened, it was something big, "Maybe I'm just projecting, y'know. I always miss _my_ dad the most during this time of the year."

A tiny bit of tension leaves Ellie and she looks out across the rolling field, planted with pumpkins and squash and other autumnal vegetables.

"Was he like...really into Halloween or something?" She asks Dina.

"Well, _Talia_ loved Halloween, so my dad used to throw this huge Halloween party every year. The whole commune would show up, like all twelve families. But I’m pretty sure that for him, the real draw was the pumpkin carving. He would get on this thing every year, y’know-- _we have to carve the pumpkins together. The family that carves pumpkins together, stays together._ And we would be like--Dad, that’s not a thing, no one says that. And he would say, _It’s a new world, it’s a thing if I say it’s a thing.”_

Dina pauses, smiles with a diluted kind of fondness at the bittersweet memory; she traces an amorphous spot of rust on the metal tailgate underneath them.

“He was always saying that. _It’s a new world._ He never talked it about like _the world ended_ or _the world is over._ Just... _it’s a new world._ Like he only ever saw the possibilities, the opportunities to do things better than before.”

Ellie smiles, and Dina can feel her eyes on her, watching. 

“Sounds like someone I know,” She says, “Sounds like the kinda guy who would crack a joke in the middle of a nightmare, just to make everyone else feel better, a little less scared.”

Dina smiles, glances up at her. 

“Yeah, I guess...maybe I picked some things up from him…” She hesitates, adds, “I wish you could’ve met him. He would’ve liked you.”

“I wish I could’ve met him, too,” Ellie says, and she reaches over, puts a hand on Dina’s; and Dina knows this isn’t Ellie’s specialty, initiating these signs of physical comfort, which makes the gesture all the more significant, in it’s own way.

“He’d probably just tell you, like, a ton of embarrassing childhood stories about me, so…” Dina scoffs.

“Embarrassing childhood stories?” Ellie repeats, “I..I need these embarrassing childhood stories, Dina.”

Dina shrugs, hops down from the truck.

“Dina, wait--really, what are the stories--do you know them--for real, I want some adorable stories about little Dina--”

“We’ve gotta get these back into town before it gets dark,” Dina says, “You coming, or not?”

Ellie groans with disappointment and climbs into the driver’s seat. Dina gets in next to her and Ellie starts the engine. 

“I married the cat once,” Dina says abruptly, “Y’know, pretend wedding. When I was, like, four. He loved telling that story to anyone who would listen.”

Ellie laughs.

“ _What_ , it was a beautiful ceremony,” Dina says, “All the most esteemed stuffed animals were in attendance.”

Ellie laughs, then laughs some more.

And it’s worth it, the inevitable teasing that will come, if it makes her even a little happy.

\--

 _ **ELLIE**_.

“You’re up to something,” Dina says, “I can feel it.”

“Me?” Ellie says with exaggerated innocence, “I’m not up to anything. Frankly, I’m offended that you would even imply--”

“C’mon, Ellie,” Dina prods, “Just tell me.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about--you sound like a crazy person.”

The main road through Jackson is full of little pumpkins, out on each porch, outside each door; some are carved, some aren’t. It’s a waste of food, and yet it’s one of those excesses that has become almost a bragging point-- _we’re doing so well, we can use food as decorations again._ Ellie’s not sure she fully approves or even understands the practice--like, pumpkins are cool, but what good does it do to sit them out and let them slowly rot? What purpose does it serve? 

But it does at least provide a visual change to the landscape of the town, lending credence to that autumn feeling of _transition._

Dina hooks her arms through Ellie’s and they continue through the street, toward Ellie’s place. 

“I’m not _crazy_ ,” Dina tells her, “ _You’re_ being weird. Since when have you ever _wanted_ to play Scrabble? You know I’ll win, right?”

“Wow, overconfident, much?” Ellie laughs.

“Scrabble is my specialty,” Dina says, “I’m allowed to be overconfident when it comes to Scrabble.”

“Well...maybe I’m just in the mood to have my butt kicked at Scrabble. Oh, _kick_ \--that’s a double _k,_ I need to remember that one.”

Dina gives a small laugh.

They round a building, and Ellie’s place comes into view--except the outside is lit up, scattered with lamps and flashlights and a blazing bonfire. And there’s already more than two dozen people there, talking and laughing and drinking beer and cider from glass jars, roasting hotdogs on the fire. Most are in costumes of one kind or another. There’s even some kids, playing tag and running amok in masks. There’s a faint thread of music in the air--Alexander and his band are playing something soft and folksy. And out in the grass--an assortment of pumpkins and carving tools. Jesse is already kneeled on the ground, reaching into a pumpkin with a disgusted expression, raking out the slimy contents with a definitive sound of repulsion, something like, “ _Blech!”_ Cat is nearby as well, using a pencil to patiently show Sergio the finer points of laying out a design on the face of his pumpkin before carving.

Dina stops, looks sideways at Ellie.

“What...what is this?” Dina asks.

Ellie shrugs, her face a picture of total innocence.

“Ellie, did you do this? Did you throw a Halloween party?” Dina asks, and Ellie watches the smile there on her face, genuine and real and insuppressible. It’s the exact payoff she was looking for, makes all the work worth it.

“Maybe,” Ellie says shortly.

“But you hate parties,” Dina reminds her.

“I know,” Ellie says, looking back out over the people milling through the yard with capes and vampire teeth and hands doused in tangled pumpkin guts, “But _you_ don’t.”

Dina fixes her with a soft, surprised expression; there in the flickering light from the bonfire, it’s enough to make Ellie feel the kind of _happy_ she wasn’t sure she was even capable of feeling. A feeling so big, so good, that she hadn’t been sure it was possible for her to feel it. She had wondered, in the past, if maybe she just wasn’t wired for feeling these kinds of things--deep and pure and good. She’d thought maybe she was just destined for feeling lukewarm, mediocre at best.

But Dina proved her wrong, because nothing she felt about Dina was lukewarm or mediocre.

“C’mon,” Ellie says, “Let’s go carve some pumpkins. The family that carves pumpkins together, stays together. Right?”

“That’s still not a thing,” Dina laughs, “But...it’s a new world. We make the rules now, right? Anything we say, goes.”

“Anything we say, goes,” Ellie confirms, “Let’s go, I’m gonna make the scariest damn pumpkin you’ve ever seen.”

“Not too scary, Ellie,” Dina says, following after her, “You’ll traumatize the kids.”

“If a pumpkin traumatizes them, then I have...really, really bad news for them.”

\--

 _ **ADELAIDE**_.

Adelaide lounges in the grass, a cool glass jar of cider in hand. It’s a nice little party--warm and open and bright. It’s the kind of thing she hasn’t seen in--well, maybe ever. 

She vaguely remembers parties, in those small years before the NUS really came into power. The folks from the surrounding hills would come down to their farm, and they would decorate the barn up with lights, string them in the rafters and through the hay. And for a while there would be music and dancing and everyone would change out their creased, worried frowns for easy smiles and open laughter.

But then Allistair Weber, from Crabtree Hollow, just over the hill--he refused to send his son with the NUS soldiers when they showed up, and they burned down the farm in retaliation. And it was like dominoes, the way the little families, and in turn their whole community, fell into scattered disarray. 

Her mother had begged, down on her knees, when they came to take Adelaide. Her father was gone, trying to help Alistair rebuild across the way--and maybe the soldiers knew it. But no amount of begging stopped them; they took Adelaide and nothing was ever the same again.

There were no more parties. Just hunger, and pain--both received and inflicted. Being hurt, and hurting others. 

But now she’s here. In _Wyoming._ Who would have thought?

It’s true, she fucked up, trusting Daniel. Something in her had needed it though, had needed to have at least one friend here in this place, in this world. And it’s easy to ignore red flags when there are no other flags from which to choose. It wasn’t fair and it didn’t justify what had happened, she knew that, but she couldn’t just leave. Not yet. This place was too good. Free and clean and open. She wasn’t sure there were any places like this left in the world. 

She watches as Ellie and Dina carve a pumpkin together. _Not so many teeth,_ Dina keeps telling her, and Ellie laughs, works another menacing triangle into the mouth of her pumpkin. Until a glob of pumpkin guts gets tossed into Ellie’s lap, that is; she jumps up, covered in the stringy stuff, dripping pumpkin seeds, and a group of kids breaks into laughter, doubles up with giggles. Naturally, Ellie responds by giving chase--and the kids scatter, running in every direction. 

_“Clicker!”_ One of the kids calls out, “ _Ellie’s a Clicker, look out!”_

And Ellie hams it up, makes some noises, scatters the kids this way and that. And it makes Adelaide feel--something. 

It’s not like they were in love. She knows that. Not even close. But it doesn’t change the fact that Ellie has a magnetic pull, both a profound gravity and an almost child-like innocence, qualities that should be contradictory. 

But in Ellie--somehow they coincide in a strange, enthralling harmony.

She doesn’t love Ellie. But she’d be lying if she said there wasn’t a part of her that wanted the chance to see if she could. To see if Ellie could have loved her back. 

But the other part of her knows better. It’s impossible to look at them together and think there’s any room between them, any space for another person. She watches Ellie collapse back into the grass in front of Dina, laughing and out of breath, watches Dina reach over to carefully wipe a smudge of pumpkin gore away from Ellie’s cheek. A look passes between them, something dense with meaning and quiet purpose, something distinctly _domestic._ Give them a few years, Adelaide guesses, and they’ll be living a happily boring life with a garden and some animals and a chore list.

Adelaide knows she can’t do that. Could never. It’s nice here in Jackson, and maybe she’ll stay in the long run, but--domesticity isn’t in her. 

It’s getting late when she decides to get up from the grass; when she looks up, she finds Ellie approaching her, pumpkin in hand.

Ellie offers it out to her. It’s a pitifully small thing--but oddly cute for it.

“You gotta take a pumpkin,” Ellie says, “It’s...a thing, I guess. Pumpkins, and Halloween, and fall.”

Adelaide takes the pumpkin, holds it in one hand. 

“Thanks,” She says, “I...uh, I didn’t mean to crash the party or anything.”

“It’s fine,” Ellie says, and she sticks her hands in the pockets of her jacket, “Dina told me a little about the conversation you guys had. Doesn’t exactly make it better, but...I mean, what’s that thing they say about beds or whatever? Something like...misery, that it makes strange bedfellows. I get what it’s like--sometimes we’re just depending on the people around us just to get through, to survive, and it isn’t until later we realize...maybe we don’t really know them.”

Ellie glances up toward the back porch, empty now, but Adelaide had seen him earlier, watching from the railing--Joel, her dad. Or not her dad. Adelaide still wasn’t a hundred percent clear on that.

“Well...I really never meant to get anyone hurt,” Adelaide says, “Especially not you.”

Ellie shrugs, “I’m not hurt. I’m fine. We handled it. So...no hard feelings.”

Adelaide glances over her shoulder, where Dina is dodging a handful of pumpkin guts from one of the kids.

“That’s good to know,” Adelaide says, “‘Cause...your girlfriend is a tiny bit terrifying.”

“She’s not--we’re not--” Ellie says uncertainly, “I--well, yeah, she’s terrifying, when she needs to be. But I just wanted to say, y’know...if you’re planning on staying--I think that’d be okay.”

“Thanks,” Adelaide says, and she feels a surge of guilt, because she doesn’t deserve this, “Y’all have something real special here. I’ve been thinking about maybe...maybe going back for my sister. Bringing her here, to Jackson. Maybe we’d actually have an honest shot at something good, y’know.”

Ellie nods thoughtfully, says, “If there’s something we can do--all you gotta do is ask.”

Adelaide gives a small laugh.

“Y’all have done...way more than enough. Besides, I go and drag you across the country--Dina and your old man are gonna have a contest on who can take me out first.”

“He’s not--” Ellie starts, stops herself, “He doesn’t get a say in where I go or what I do. Not anymore. So...the offer’s out there.”

Adelaide shrugs, gives an understanding nod, doesn’t ask any further questions.

“I gotta get back, but--it was...good talking, or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Adelaide says, “Good talking.”

\--

Adelaide takes the back way toward her little cabin--the whole living space just _given_ to her when she got here. It had seemed overly generous at the time, suspiciously generous--she kept waiting for the catch, for the other foot to drop, but it never came. Life here was just so splendidly predictable and it wasn’t perfect, but the people here did their best to be _fair_ \--and that was more than Adelaide could say for the rest of the world out there.

She’s getting ready to climb the steps when she catches movement, just there in the shadow of the house--a bulky shape moving toward her.

Daniel steps out, and without even thinking she reaches for her gun--remembers, too late, that they don’t carry guns, here inside the walls. 

He holds up his hands in a sign of surrender, and the only thing that makes her pause at all is the paleness of his face, a wideness of his eyes--fear, plain and unhidden.

“You need to go,” Adelaide says in a low voice, “You’d already be dead if I had a gun--”

“Listen,” He hisses, “Listen to me, okay--I saw them. Way off, over the hills, but I saw them.”

“Saw _what_?” Adelaide snaps.

“Flares, Adelaide. Blue and red. Flares.”

A coldness sweeps through her, from her feet to the top of her head, like being dunked into an ice bath.

“The NUS...they’re coming for us, Adelaide.”  
  
  



	2. I Ain't No Fortunate One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is OC-heavy, y'all, but just stick with me, there's still plenty left to go in this story.

_**PHINN.** _

Phinn is happy.

There hasn’t been a lot of that so far in her nine years. Some, but not a lot. A lot less, even, since they came and took Adelaide away. Her Mom didn’t last very long after that. Dad says she died of a broken heart, but there was a lot of coughing involved, and Phinn suspects it was something else--but the broken heart, missing Adelaide, couldn’t have helped.

Now it’s just her and Dad and that’s alright, but he doesn’t say a whole lot these days. She helps him in the field and sometimes they hear gunfire out over the hills and he sends her inside--but he won’t tell her what’s going on. Which is kinda shit, when you think about it--she’s _nine_. Not a baby. She’s seen the monsters. 

One of them wandered right up to her window one day, howling and carrying on. Broke the glass, reached a rotten, squishy hand inside and grabbed her by the hair. It might have got her, if Dad hadn’t made her keep the little hatchet in her room.

She chopped that thing’s arm clean damn off, and by then Dad had gotten there--blew it to pieces with his hunting rifle. Little bits of soft, spongy flesh everywhere. It was gross. And afterwards, Phinn took the hatchet and cut her hair, up past her shoulders. No monsters were getting a one-up like that on her ever again.

But they were really rare around here. Maybe because they were pretty far from the big cities, and all the rocky hills and red clay and that big Ohio River probably made it harder for the things to move around. Or maybe they were just lucky. It was hard to be sure. Dad says there used to be more of them, that they’re still out there, down in the valleys, out in the old towns--but they don’t go there anymore. Everything they need is right here, Dad says. No use in pushing their luck.

But she’s seen the people in the uniforms, too. Dark red and deep blue, almost black. The little eagles on the sleeves. She saw them drag Tommy Bircham away last week. Put him on a truck. His dad came out with a gun and _bam._ They shot him dead. Now everyone’s wondering what Mrs. Bircham’s gonna do, how she’s gonna make it--but she’s tough. Phinn’s pretty sure she’s gonna be fine. Sad, but fine.

But even that doesn’t really matter right now. Monsters or uniforms or Mrs. Bircham. Right now, Phinn is happy and she doesn't wanna think about any of those things.

She’s lying in the grass, with the sun warm against her face, arms folded under her head. Eyes closed, letting Vi’s voice float over her.

“... _the Beast was terrible and huge and frightening--”_ Vi reads from the book in her lap, “-- _with gnashing teeth and yellow eyes and claws like daggers--”_

“I want claws like daggers,” Phinn says, eyes still closed, “No one would mess with me if I had claws like daggers.”

“Yeah?” Vi scoffs, rolls her eyes, “And what happens when you wanna hold someone’s hand? Oh, you can’t, ‘cause of your dumb dagger claws.”

“Who wants to hold hands? Holding hands is dumb.”

“Well, I think dagger claws are dumb. How does that make you feel?”

Phinn clutches her chest, as if it’s been pierced with an arrow, pulls an agonized face, rolls over in the grass.

“Oh, no, you’ve killed me--oh, man, I’m never coming back from this--ahhhh--”

“Shut up, you’re being so dumb!” Vi tells her, but she laughs anyway.

Phinn pulls a very dramatically _dead_ face, goes limp in the grass.

“You’re not _funny_ ,” Vi says, “I don’t want you to have dagger claws.”

“Okay,” Phinn says reluctantly, sits up on her elbow, “No dagger claws--but I _am_ funny. So is there gonna be some fighting in this story or what? I like the ones with fighting.”

“No, it’s a _love story--”_

Phinn makes a gagging sound, groans, flops back down in the grass.

“Fine,” Vi says, “I’ll just go home--”

“NO,” Phinn says, sits up, “No, just--keep reading, I’ll listen--” She folds her legs under her, adds in a grumble, “--even if it’s a dumb love story.”

Vi sits up a little straighter, smooths her hands over the page of the big book in her lap. Her hair, blond like a jar of honey left out in the sun, is tied up in a knot; she started keeping it this way after Phinn told her about the monster, how it had wrapped its fingers in her hair, and it gave Phinn a lot of relief, knowing Vi was at least a little safer this way, with her hair tied up.

“Phinn, I was thinking…” Vi says slowly, looking down at the page, “...maybe, you know. Maybe you could take a turn reading, too.”

“No way,” Phinn says stubbornly, lies back in the grass, “Reading is dumb.”

“You can’t just keep calling things dumb--”

“Sure I can, watch,” Phinn points, “That tree over there? Dumb. That cloud? Dumb. That bird? Real dumb.”

“You don’t know that bird,” Vi says, despite herself, “It could be smart. For a bird.”

“Nah, he’s a dummy, I can tell.”

“C’mon, Phinn,” Vi coaxes gently, “You can only get better by practicing.”

“I don’t...I don’t get better,” Phinn says, “I only get worse at it. It’s dumb.”

“Please, Phinn,” Vi says, “I’ll help.”

Phinn sighs. She sits up reluctantly, scoots over the grass to sit next to her. Vi shifts the book, so that it’s in both their laps. Phinn looks down at the page, with its ornate illustrations. She takes a deep breath, lets her eyes find the words. But the letters jump around, get mixed up, refuse to cooperate. Her heart begins to pound in her chest, almost as hard as the day that thing broke the glass and grabbed her hair.

She hates this. Hates that someday Vi is going to listen to her stumbling over these words and decide that she’s too stupid to be around. Vi, who reads so easily and smoothly, who reads nonstop, who is so much smarter and cleverer and better. Vi, who is patient and kind and good and her only friend in the entire world. 

What’s she gonna do, when Vi finally sees how dumb she really is? What’s she gonna do, when Vi leaves her all alone someday?

“It’s okay,” Vi says gently; she puts a finger under the first word, “Just give it a try, Phinn.”

Phinn lets out a heavy breath, looks hard at the word.

“Tuh...huh...eh…” Oh, god, she hates this, hates stammering out these sounds like a baby, hates feeling so stupid and helpless and embarrassed.

“Remember, the _t_ and the _h,_ they make that sound when they’re together--” Vi presses her tongue to her teeth and makes the sound.

“Th--” Phinn repeats uncertainly, “ _The..._ buh--eh--ss--”

“ _Beast,”_ Vi supplies quietly.

 _"Beast,”_ Phinn repeats with frustration, “The beast...is...tuh…ah…”

“ _Tall,”_ Vi says.

She can’t take it. She can’t take this. She can’t take another second of it. She hates this and herself and the words and her stupid brain--

“This is _stupid,”_ Phinn says, and she pushes the book away in a huff of rage and embarrassment. The book slides from Vi’s lap, tumbles into the grass.

There’s a ripping sound, and the page separates from the binding almost entirely.

Phinn’s heart leaps into her throat.

“Oh, no,” She says quietly, “Oh--shit. I’m sorry, Vi--”

Vi is staring down at the book in the grass, with its ripped page fluttering ever so slightly in the breeze, barely holding on.

“Vi…” Phinn says, “Violetta, I’m sorry, look, maybe--maybe we can fix it--I can fix it--”

She pulls the book toward her, smooths the page out, lines it back up with its torn edge.

“It was my Mom’s,” Vi says quietly; not angry, like Phinn expected, but something else, “She used to read it to me, every night. Before she got sick.”

“I’m sorry, Vi, really,” Phinn says again, because she doesn’t know what else to say, doesn’t know how to say it any harder, with any more meaning.

“I miss her so much, Phinn,”Vi says, and to Phinn’s horror, the tears begin to roll down her cheeks.

“Don’t cry--oh, man, please don’t cry, Vi,” Phinn says urgently, “I didn’t mean--I didn’t mean to make you sad, I just...I feel so stupid when I try to read--”

“You’re not stupid, dummy,” Vi says, wiping the tears with her sleeve, “So what, reading’s hard for you--doesn’t mean you’re stupid. Just means you have to practice more. So it’s kinda lucky you have me, right?”

Phinn gives a sad, nervous grin, hands the book back to Vi. 

“Dad has tape, we’ll fix it,” Vi says, even though her voice is still thick with sadness, “Not a big deal.”

Phinn settles back in next to her, watching her face with worry. She doesn’t like talking about feelings. Talking about them makes them heavy, makes them harder to carry, and she prefers to keep them as far away as possible, thank you very much. But for Vi? She could find something to say, maybe, to make Vi feel better.

“I...I miss my mom, too,” She says, “And Adelaide. I miss them so much. But at least we have each other, right?”

“Right,” Vi says, “We’ll always have each other.”

“Promise?” Phinn asks.

“ _Promise,”_ Vi says firmly, “Now are we gonna try this reading stuff or what? Let’s take turns, okay? We’ll read it together.”

Phinn hates reading. 

But as long as Vi is there, well.

Phinn is happy.

\--

 _**VI**. _ _four years later._

“ _Phinn,”_ She hisses at the dark lump in the bed, “ _Phinn, scoot over, dammit--”_

“Wazzat…?” Phinn mumbles groggily, but she moves over in the bed, makes enough room so that Vi can climb in next to her.

“‘Nother nightmare?” Phinn asks, eyes still closed, only half awake.

Vi hesitates, staring up into the dark; somewhere in the room, one of the other girls stirs in her sleep and Vi’s heart jumps. If she’s caught out of her room, there’ll be hell to pay--but it’s worth it, for these few moments of feeling safe, here with Phinn. It’s a feeling in rare supply now, here at the Core--the very center of the NUS. 

They came in the night, dragged her out of bed, and there was nothing her mother could do. It had been a miracle to find that Phinn had been brought in, too--although it made sense, seeing as how they only lived in walking distance of each other. 

It was the only thing that had kept her sane these past few years, having Phinn here, too. She wasn’t even allowed to have _books_ here in the Core. There was no escape, not even through words, not even in her own mind. It was training, every day--running, shooting, fighting, sometimes _each other._ Vi was sure it was some twisted form of psychological warfare, some way of breaking them and keeping them unbalanced--but there wasn’t much she could do about it, except to follow through and fight with all she had.

She didn’t know what she would do if she was ever called on to fight Phinn. Partly because she didn’t think she could hurt Phinn, even if she wanted, and partly because--Phinn would surely win. Phinn had taken to this life with so much more ease, because she was good at it. The fighting.

“Yeah,” Vi finally admits to Phinn, “The one with my mom. Where she’s back from the dead.”

“M’sorry,” Phinn says, sleepy but sincere, “Sleep here tonight. Jus’ get back in the morning before count.”

Vi turns to look at her; the window is covered with bars, and the moonlight throws a series of dark, vertical lines over Phinn’s face. But in the silver light, through the tangle of dark hair over her face, she can see that her eye is blackened, swollen.

“ _Phinn,”_ She whispers, “What happened? What’d they do to you?”

“Nothin’,” Phinn says, “Stupid commander tried to get in my face though, tried to make me fight one of the smaller kids. Busted my face with his rifle, the fucker. I’ll get back at him when I get the chance.”

“Phinn--” Vi says, and Phinn finally seems to sense the urgency in her voice, opens her eyes to look at Vi properly, “--Phinn, we can’t stay here. We can’t.”

“We have to,” Phinn says, “Where would we go, Vi? You’ve heard what they said--there’s nothing out there. There’s no where to go, even if we wanted. At least we’ve got food and beds and guns--”

“Do you believe them?” Vi asks, “Do you trust them? What they say? You don’t think they could be lying about what’s out there?”

“I guess they could be,” Phinn says reluctantly, “But does it even matter? What if there are places _worse_ than this, Vi? You know there has to be. You know this can’t be as bad as it gets.”

Vi deflates, lies back against the pillow.

“I don’t know,” She says in a quiet, fragile voice, “This place is pretty bad, Phinn. I hate it here. I _hate_ it. Phinn, I _hate it so much--”_

“Hey, it’s okay,” Phinn says, “We’ve got each other. We don’t need anything else. Right?”

Vi takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, looks over at Phinn, at her wide, gray eyes.

“Yeah,” Vi says, “Yeah, you’re right.”

“And we’re never gonna leave each other. Right?”

“Never,” Vi says.

“Don’t worry, Vi,” Phinn says, “Things’ll get better. We’ll figure it out. Promise.”

“Okay,” Vi says, because she trusts Phinn. Phinn, who’s so tough, who can’t be beaten, who never seems to know when to give up. Phinn, who makes her feel safe and known and human, when this place is trying so hard to take all that from her.

Phinn, who is already asleep again, snoring softly against her shoulder.

Phinn, who is kind of a perfect dummy.

Phinn, who she can’t live without.

\--

 _ **PHINN**_. three years later.

“VI,” She shouts across the room, raising her voice over the sound of gunfire, “ON YOUR LEFT!”

Vi brings her shotgun around just in time to wedge it under the chin of a Clicker bearing down on her. Phinn jumps the metal table separating them, hand wrapped tight around her hatchet, ready to bury it into the fucking monster.

But Vi pulls the trigger and the thing’s head explodes, showers them both in shards of bone-hard fungi and mossy flesh. 

“DOWN,” Vi shouts, and Phinn drops just in time for her to blast a stalker trying to sneak up behind her.

“Nice,” Phinn tells her, “Glad you’ve got my back.”

“Well, someone has to have it, and you’ve annoyed the shit out of everyone else--I’m kind of your only option at this point.”

Phinn swings the hatchet at a runner trying to rush her, cleaves up into the chin, yanks the blade away in time for the thing to fall in a spasming heap to the floor.

“No one appreciates good music, that’s the problem,” Phinn tells her, as if this is a very normal, very casual conversation, “Who _doesn’t_ like singing while they work?”

“Probably everyone who is terrified of getting their faces eaten off,” Vi says, “It makes you sound a little psychotic, when you’re singing and cutting things up, you know.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Phinn says with a laugh, and she takes a deep breath, tightens her hand on the hatchet, “ _Some folks were born to wave the flag--”_

“Please don’t do this,” Vi sighs, “Shit--!”

A stalker slips around Phinn, tackles Vi.

“ _Ohhh, they’re red, white, and blue_ ,” Phinn sings with feeling as she grabs the stalker by a handful of the boney, slimey growths on its head, “ _And when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief’--oooh, they point the cannon at you--”_

She heaves the stalker off of Vi, throws it in the floor, draws a pistol and shoots it twice through the head. 

Vi scrambles to her feet. Phinn does a rhythmic little movement to the time of her song.

“ _It ain’t me, it ain’t me--I ain’t no Senator’s son--”_

“We could die, you know?” Vi says, only a little out of breath, “We could die, and this terrible dance is the last thing you’ll have ever done.”

 _“It ain’t me, it ain’t me,”_ Phinn continues, ignoring her, still dancing with pistol in hand, “ _I ain’t no fortunate one, no.”_

“MAXWELL,” A voice barks from a doorway; it’s Morrison, their commanding officer, “Stop fucking around and get out here. You, too, Walker. Goddamn kids…”

“What a fuckin’ downer,” Phinn grumbles, “C’mon, let’s go see what’s got his goddamn underwear all bunched up.”

Back in the daylight, outside the cellar of the butcher’s shop they’d been clearing, there’s a line of people kneeling on the pavement. Squatters, living in the infested zone. Just as Phinn clears the stairs, a man on the end tries to make a break for it. Instinctively, she reaches out, clotheslines him with a stiff forearm; he falls and she drops down on him, presses a knee into his back. 

“Good catch,” Holtzapfel nods at her in approval as she leans down, continues applying handcuffs to the kneeling line of people.

“Please,” The man under Phinn pleads, “Please, you gotta let us go--”

“We’re _saving_ you,” Phinn says, drawing out her own handcuffs, slipping them over his wrists, “The infested zone is fucking uninhabitable, man.”

“If you’re saving us then why are we wearing fucking _handcuffs?”_ He spits out against the pavement.

“Listen--do you wanna be saved or not, asshole?” She asks, “Rhetorical question, I don’t really care what the answer is.”

She drags him up, drops him back into the line with the others.

“Euphinnia Maxwell--” Morrison is reading from a paper.

“It’s _Phinn,”_ Phinn corrects him with venom, “My name’s not fucking _Euphinnia.”_

“The paper says--what the fuck ever,” Morrison says in a frustrated rush, “Maxwell and Walker--you’re gettin’ assigned to some special task force. You gotta go back to the Core and get packed.”

“What?” Phinn asks, “What kinda special task force?”

“Some kinda retrieval mission,” He says, “Some place out in Wyoming.”

“Wyoming? What the fuck is in Wyoming?” Phinn demands to know

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Morrison snaps, “Some town called _Jackson."_  
  
  



	3. Canvas Sneakers

_**DINA**_.

She’s not sure what it is, can’t put her finger on it, but breakfast this morning--it tastes damn good.

Everything seems a little better. The sun’s a little brighter, the cold seems invigorating rather than oppressive, and one of the laces broke on her boots this morning but--hey, whatever. Nothing is getting her down today.

There’s probably a reason for it, this buoyancy she’s feeling as she’s eating breakfast in the dining hall. If she had to say, if you really made her give a reason, she’d probably talk about the party last night. It had been a good party, nobody could deny that. 

And if you asked her to get specific, she might have to think about it a minute. If you asked her to really put words as to _why_ the party was so good, as to why she still feels so pleasantly warm and alive and _happy--_ well, she’d probably talk about watching Ellie pretending to be a clicker, covered in pumpkin viscera and being a total goof. An adorable, funny, _good_ goof. 

And maybe it had stuck with her because in that moment, watching Ellie flop into the grass and pretend to be a very dramatically _defeated_ clicker--for the first time, she could see it, could feel it--an idea, vague and foggy but _there._ An idea of what the future could look like. That there could be a _future_ at all.

Dina had always known there was a _future_ , sure. But she had always seen it in a very abstract way, like a picture so out of focus that the shapes aren’t even recognizable. But now, suddenly, if she allowed herself, just for a moment, to add _Ellie_ to the equation...well, the picture got a little more focused.

If she allows herself to think about a house--just a house--then the rest of the details start to fill themselves in. Maybe this house has some plants in the window. Windchimes on the porch. A window over the sink, where the sunlight comes in. Maybe there’s a garden and a painting on the wall and over by the door, maybe there’s a pair of canvas sneakers.

It’s almost too good to look at head on--it’s like trying to look straight at the sun. It’s too good to hope for, because if she lets herself hope for it--it’s going to hurt all the worse when it never materializes.

And yet--what’s the point in living, if you can’t let yourself hope? That’s the way Dina sees it. If you can’t imagine something better, can’t let yourself want something _more_ , then why even keep going? 

So she holds onto it, that image of canvas sneakers waiting by the front door--the idea of an Ellie, leaned against a kitchen counter in her socks. Older and happier and more relaxed, maybe. Grinning because of some dumb joke she’s just told, there in the sunlight from the window over the sink. 

She holds onto the whole thing, carefully, like cradling a bird’s nest in her hands; she holds onto it and knows that it’s fragile and maybe just plain insane, but now that it exists--she can’t just let it go.

Her thoughts are interrupted by Jesse, who takes a seat across the table from her with his own breakfast.

“Where’s Ellie?” He asks, looking at the empty seat next to Dina.

“Sleeping,” Dina says, “Who knew being a clicker was such hard work.”

He gives a small laugh, a kind of wry smile, but he doesn’t seem his usual, relaxed self. Dina feels a surge of guilt. She knows there are unresolved issues here, borders left vague and untidy, and that it’s her fault.

“Yeah,” He says; then, more pointedly, “So are you gonna tell me where she went?”

Dina looks down at her plate, the scrambled eggs all pushed to one side.

“I don’t--”

“I know she told you,”Jesse says, “She disappears for a week, scares everyone half to goddamn death, makes Joel come after her--and that’s all supposed to be okay? I at least need to know it was for a good reason, and I know she told you--”

“She didn’t,” Dina says defensively, “I mean, she didn’t tell me _why._ She said...she said she had a good reason, and that’s enough for me. I trust her.”

“Where did she go, Dina? You were too calm while she was gone. I know she told you she was leaving, and you didn't say a word to anyone."

Dina looks up at him. He’s never like this, never demanding or intrusive, almost to a fault. This has to be really bothering him, or he wouldn’t be here, pushing like this.

“I can’t tell you,” Dina says quietly, “I made a promise. I’m sorry, Jesse--”

“So your promises to _her_ trump whatever it is _we_ have, is that about right?”

“Jesse--”

“I’m not even sure _what_ we have anymore, Dina,” He says, “What even--what is this? Because anymore it’s just...you and Ellie, living in your own world. Secrets and surprise Halloween parties and...I don’t know, man. Starting to feel like a third wheel here, Dina.”

She sets her fork down, because her appetite is gone, and she doesn’t know what to say to him. Doesn’t know how to say that he’s not wrong.

“I mean--I’m not gonna hold it against you, Dina. If she’s what you want, that’s...I get it. You know I care about Ellie--we all do. But...I’m better than being a third wheel, I think--”

“Of course you are,” Dina says, “Jesse, I’ve never meant to make you feel like _less_ , or...or to hurt you--”

“I know,” He says with a resigned shrug, “You’re not a bad person, Dina. You’re a...you’re just a person who lives on a larger scale than I think most people can appreciate. Always looking at bigger pictures. That’s...that’s why I fell in love with you in the first place.”

He holds her gaze, and the guilt is an overwhelming weight settling slowly onto her shoulders. Jesse has been an integral part of her life almost since the day she got here to Jackson. Her first friend, her first boyfriend, her first love. Letting go of that, no matter the circumstances, involves an amount of pain that seems daunting, particularly in that moment.

And yet she knows, deep down, that this pain is just part of the price she has to pay for those canvas sneakers by the door. 

“You know I love you, too, Jesse, “She says quietly, “That’s never going to change.”

“But it _is_ , isn’t it?” Jesse says in a hushed voice, “Changing, I mean.”

“It’s…” She hesitates, “I don’t know. Yes. It’s changing, but it’s not going away. It’s not different--”

“But it’s not the same. It’s okay, Dina…” He says, “It’s not like this wasn’t something I saw coming. And she’s...she’s tough. If I had to pick someone else to have your back, someone I could trust to look after you--I mean, yeah, she’s it,” He gives a light, dry laugh, “But...I just...I don’t know, Dina…”

He taps his fingers against the table top, thinking.

“Just be careful, Dina. I don’t wanna get all fucking weird and dramatic but--you know as well as I do. She’s like...bringing an open flame into the house. One wrong move and everything’s gonna get burned down.”

“She’s _good_ , Jesse--” Dina says with some insistence.

“I _know_ ,” He says, “But tell me you don’t know what I mean. Tell me you _don’t_ see it.”

“I…” Dina starts, hesitates. Stops.

“Yeah,” Jesse says in quiet affirmation, “Exactly. I just want you to know that I’m here. Not even...not even like _that_ , if that’s not what you want or need. But--if there’s a time when you need me, for whatever reason, y’know--I’m here.”

She gives a small nod and somehow the guilt is exponentially worse, eating her alive, because what has she done to deserve friends like this. A friend like Jesse. 

\--

 _ **ELLIE**_.

“What do you mean... _flares?”_ Dina asks, riding just behind her on the trail.

“Adelaide says they use some kind of flares to help coordinate their movements, when they split into teams,” She explains, reins in hand, “I guess Daniel showed back up, told her he’d seen the flares somewhere close by.”

“Well, why would they be coming _here?”_ Dina asks, “They must be after Adelaide and Daniel, right?”

“I guess,” Ellie says, “Right now Maria says we don’t have any reason to think they’re going to be aggressive, but--”

“--she wants patrolmen at every outpost, in twenty-four shifts, yeah. I guess that’s the smart move--try to get as many eyes out there as possible, figure out what they’re doing before we jump into any conflicts.”

“Maybe,” Ellie says, “Kinda seems like we don’t have a lot of options, since we know so little about them. Seems like we oughta send someone right out to meet them and see what the fuck they want, but--Maria didn’t agree with that take.”

“Imagine that,” Dina says, and Ellie can hear it, the way she’s rolling her eyes, even if she can’t see her face, “I saw her and Joel talking before we left. He seemed pretty upset.”

She says it carefully, curiously, as if she knows she’s taking a step out onto a minefield.

“Trying to convince her I shouldn’t go, probably,” Ellie says, angry just thinking about it, “I wish he would mind his own damn business for once.”

“I don’t know,” Dina says slowly, “I’m not crazy about the idea of you being out here with some unknown army wandering around, either. I kind of see where he’s coming from--”

“Yeah, well...you’re also not trying to go over my head and keep me locked up inside. Plus...kinda feels like you have more say in it than he does, at this point.”

“Oh, does that mean you’re actually going to start _listening_ to me?” Dina asks.

Ellie gives a small laugh, “Maybe. We’ll see.”

As the old factory where they’re stationed comes into sight, Ellie slips out of the saddle and both continue on foot. The air has a definite bite to it now, transitioning from mild October chill to real November misery. 

“So…” Dina breaks the silence, watching the ground as she speaks, “I think...I think Jesse broke up with me?"

Ellie’s heart feels like it skips a beat, like it’s just missed a step on the stairs. She glances up, tries to get a hold on how Dina feels about it. 

“What?” Ellie asks, “Why?”

Dina doesn’t look up, seems to consider her words carefully.

“A lot of reasons,” Dina says, “And I guess it was really pretty mutual. There were things that...just weren’t working for either of us anymore. Things that were changing.”

Dina and Jesse have broken up before--their relationship has always been notoriously on and off--but she’s never heard Dina talk about one of their breakups quite like this before. In words this definitive and absolute.

Truthfully, Ellie had been avoiding asking about their relationship for a while now. It had been nice, living in a perfect, safe bubble with Dina these past few weeks, where things existed in a comfortable limbo.She’d been doing everything she could to avoid bursting that bubble--which included asking prying questions. Demanding definitions and labels and commitments. Ellie didn’t really need those things from Dina anyway.

Although, now that the question had been answered, now that there was room to think about it--maybe a definition would be nice. A label. A commitment. But did Dina want those things, too? Or did Dina want to keep living in the bubble, the comfortable limbo?

She’s afraid to ask, afraid to push, because if the answer is _no_ \--then she’s lost the bubble, too. And somehow this half-way place, this neither-here-nor-there, it’s infinitely better than nothing at all. Better to have _some_ of Dina, than none of her.

“He was...kinda pissed, actually,” Dina says, “He was really worried about you, while you were in Utah.”

“I didn’t mean to freak anyone out,” Ellie says with some exasperation--how many times is she going to have to explain herself over something that isn’t really anyone else’s business? 

“I just had to figure some things out,” She goes on, “That’s all. You knew I was coming right back.”

“But I still didn’t know you were _safe_ ,” Dina says quietly, “I still worried about you.”

A twinge of guilt works its way into Ellie’s conscience.

“I’m sorry,” She says, sincere, “I didn’t mean--”

“I know,” Dina says, “I know, let’s--just put it behind us. Yeah?”

“I would fucking _love_ that,” Ellie says with a small, relieved laugh. 

\--

_**VI**. _

“Eyes on two,” Vi says, sweeping the binoculars up the path, then back down, “Looks like they’re alone. Horses. Lightly armed. Minimal gear.”

“Just two?” Phinn asks.

“Two girls. Seventeen? Eighteen? Can’t tell.”

“Do they look tough?” 

Vi watches the two girls on the path, heads together in conversation. They look normal enough, bundled up in heavy canvas coats against the cold. The one has a dusting of freckles across her nose, dark hair somewhere on the spectrum between _red_ and _brunette._ Vi can just make out a scar, there, over one of her eyes. A break in the line of her brow. An interruption. She’s got a rifle slung over her shoulder, and that shape under her coat is probably a pistol. There’s a way she’s carrying herself that Vi recognizes, on some level. It’s not unlike the way the soldiers trained at the Core carry themselves--a little light in the foot, ready to jump into action at any second.

“Hm. This one,” Vi says, “Looks like maybe some kind of training. I don’t know.”

“And the other one?”

The other one is different. Dark waves tied back, out of the way. What might be a scar there, on her chin. A shotgun across her back, not so different from the one Vi carries herself. She’s probably _tough_ , as Phinn liked to put it, but there’s something a little softer about her. But maybe it’s just the way she’s looking at the other girl--something else Vi recognizes.

“Pretty tough-looking,” Vi tells Phinn, lowers the binoculars.

“Do you think we can take ‘em?” Phinn asks, and it’s a rhetorical question--Phinn has never been one to doubt her own abilities.

“Well, those are our orders, so I don’t think we have a choice but to try.”

“One of these patrols has to know something about where Daniel is,” Phinn shrugs, unholsters a pistol, “Could be our girls out there. We could get lucky. Think they’d give us a promotion?”

“Maybe _you_ ,” Vi says, “They like you better. Might give you one of the big, fancy rooms all by yourself--”

“And then what would _you_ do, down in the barracks by yourself? Make friends with _Holtzapfel?”_

“God--no,” Vi says with a shudder, “I got stuck in the truck with her on the last leg of this trip--it was a full eight hours of mouth breathing, Phinn.”

Phinn laughs. Vi still isn’t sure if she likes it, this new haircut of Phinn’s. The one side shaved so close. It gives her a hardened look, makes her look even less like the Phinn who sat beside her in the grass, in those blessed _before_ days, and read haltingly from a fairy tale book. Makes her look more like _them._

And yet--she doesn’t hate it. It does do something to enhance that teasing, crooked smile of hers, the one that just barely shows the even, white line of her teeth.

“Well, then--let’s get this wrapped up, so we can make sure neither of us gets stuck with Holzapfel on the ride back. Deal?”

“ _Deal,”_ Vi agrees with a sigh, and she drags her own pistol from it's holster.


	4. Windchimes

_**PHINN.**_ last winter.

Outside, the ground is bare and gray; the trees stand like a forest of bones, cold and white and still. The sky’s some kind of slate color, and the clouds are threatening snow. 

Phinn lies in her bed, watching the wind howl through that bone forest, feeling grateful that for once she was inside--warm and comfortable and unworried. They’d been running so many missions, clearing so many new zones, it was hard to keep track. Her body was sore, her brain was exhausted, and her luck had to be running out.

At sixteen, she’d already been around long enough to know--no one lasts forever. It only takes one time, one slip up, one mistake--and sometimes not even your own. Sometimes the new guy on the team gets spooked and blows a hole in your knee and then you’re fucking done, with those things tearing you apart in the floor of some strip mall, or a parking garage, or a school gym, or where the fuck ever you happen to be at the time. 

She’s seen it. She knows. It’s only a matter of time. And every time she makes it back--that’s one time closer to when she  _ won’t.  _ More importantly, every time  _ Vi _ went out and came back--well, Phinn couldn’t think about it too much. Too close. She tried to make sure they were assigned together as much as possible, just to keep an eye on her--not because Vi couldn’t do it, couldn’t take care of herself, but because Phinn didn’t trust anyone else to have her back. Didn’t trust anyone else to know and understand Violetta’s importance.

Because if the day came when Vi didn’t make it back--then Phinn reckons that might be the day she’s done, too. Not much point in fighting out there, and in here, without Vi around. Sometimes she thinks Vi might be the only thing keeping her sane. The only thing keeping her from being truly, completely alone in the world.

The music helps, too. She’s not supposed to have it, strictly speaking, but she’s done her part, killed their fucking monsters, dragged in their prisoners, so they can take the Walkman from her dead fucking fingers. 

And right now, with her three bunkmates gone doing whatever the fuck they're doing, she’s gonna listen for as long as she wants. The headphones are a comfort, snug over her ears, and the low hum of the music is soothing.

“ _ \--good men through the ages,”  _ She sings the song quietly to herself, watching out the window, “ _ Tryin’ to find the sun. And I wonder, still I wonder...who’ll stop the rain…?” _

She sees movement out of the corner of her eye, rips the headphones off, reaching for her hatchet under the bed--but she stops less than halfway there, because she realizes it’s only Vi.

She’s been on patrol duty, and the end of her nose is flushed red with cold; she pulls back the hood of her parka.

“You look...half-frozen,” Phinn says, trying not to laugh.

She rips the toboggan from her head, throws it down on Phinn’s bed, collapses down beside it.

“Try  _ full  _ frozen--it’s a fucking nightmare out there. I can’t remember the last time it was this cold.”

“Well, get better at not being  caught with the books and you won’t be on patrol duty so much,” Phinn reminds her, “You’re not sneaky enough. Or you like to read too much? Some combination of the two.”

“Thanks for the analysis, I’ll take it into consideration,” Vi says with an annoyed huff, “Listen, I know we don’t normally do this until closer to Christmas but--I have something and I can’t wait anymore, it’s killing me--”

She reaches into the pocket of her coat, draws out a little brown packet.

Phinn glances toward the door, makes sure it’s pulled shut.  _ Christmas  _ technically doesn’t exist inside the Core--gift exchanges are a punishable offense--but that’s never stopped Phinn and Vi before.

Phinn takes the package, looks up at Vi. Her hair is in a disarray from the discarded hat, and her face is pale, flushed red--but her barely contained excitement is infectious. Innocent, in its way. 

Phinn pulls at the paper, finds a cassette tape inside.

“Holy shit,” She laughs, “No fuckin’  _ way.  _ How the hell did you  _ find  _ this?”

“Very carefully,” Vi laughs as Phinn rips open the Walkman, switches out the tapes.

“It  _ works _ ,” Phinn says with awe, “It fucking  _ works _ . You found a working copy of  _ Chronicle _ \-- _ on cassette?  _ Are you a fucking wizard?”

“I mean...I’m pretty much magic, so--yes?”

“You really are fucking magic,” Phinn laughs, “Oh my  _ god _ \--it has it, it has the track, Vi--”

She jumps up, stands in the bed, and Vi looks surprised, leans back to look up at her.

“ _ I put a spell on youuu,”  _ Phinn croons, points at Vi, keeps time with a tapping foot, “ _ Becaaause you’re mine--you better stop that playin’ that you’re doin’--”  _ She wags a finger dramatically, “-- _ I said watch out...I ain’t lyin’--” _

Vi laughs, makes a  _ have you lost your mind  _ kind of face.

Phinn drops back into the bed, listens to the satisfying swell of the dark, moody guitar, coalescing with drums and cymbals into a sound that really is like pure fucking magic.

She pulls the headphones off, lets them hang around her neck. 

“Hot damn--that’s a good gift,” She says, “All I’ve got for you is a dumb book.”

She leans over, reaches into her nightstand, pulls out a slender novel. 

“I didn’t wrap it because I’m...a piece of shit, honestly, but here you go,” She holds it out for Vi.

Vi looks down at it, looks back up at Phinn--back at the novel.

“How?” She asks.

“Well, I heard that Clyse’s group was gonna be sweeping a bookstore in a new sector, so I did some things I’m not terribly proud of and in exchange he kept an eye out for this.”

A look of confusion passes over Vi’s face.

“You didn’t--like--you mean--”

“Jesus, Vi, no--I had to fold his clothes for a month--”

“I had to ask!”

“No, you didn’t, actually!” Phinn laughs, “What part of you thinks I would want to touch any part of _Clyse?_ Just take the book already, before I get really offended.”

Vi takes the book from her hand, flips through the pages.

“This is my  _ favorite _ ,” She says with quiet fondness, “I was so fucking bummed when they took my old copy…”

“Yeah, you complained for a week straight, I remember,” Phinn says, “So...what’s it about?”

“Well...it’s kind of a love story--”

“Yeesh, no thanks,” Phinn says, “Boring.”

“Wait--it’s a love story, but not...like, a good one? These two terrible people fall in love, and one of them dies--and the guy is, like, so tortured by it that he becomes a total maniac--”

“Okay…” Phinn says slowly, “I might be able to get on board with that…”

“And there’s ghosts. And some fighting. You might like it.”

Phinn sighs, lies back in her bed, makes room for Vi.

“Alright,” She says, “Hit me with it.”

Vi strips off the bulky coat, falls into the bed next to her; from the headphones, the quiet sounds of another song continues playing. Vi opens the book up to the first page.

It’s not like Phinn can’t read--she can. It got easier as she got older, primarily due to Violetta’s dogged persistence and patience. But it’s still not her favorite thing to do. She would volunteer for a fight with a bloater before she would pick up a book on her own.

But listening to Vi read?

Well, that’s still very much one of her favorite things.

\--

_**VI**_. now.

The two girls come in through a garage door; from the top floor, which is really just a metal walkway providing access to the row of overhead offices, Vi can hear them settling the horses in, talking in low voices. Her hand tightens over her pistol, crouched in the dark, listening. 

It’s strange, because they had looked so normal. Not that much older than she and Phinn, if at all. They hadn’t looked like murderers, or monsters. The Core railed endlessly on the fact that the world was over, and that everyone outside the Core was living in a quagmire of brutality and violence. And Vi had seen enough to know that wasn’t totally a lie.

But the girls come up the stairs, and they still look normal, even closer up like this. One of them , with the red hair, jogs out onto the floor of the factory and starts a generator. The lights flicker on, flood the place with illumination.

Phinn is down there, crouched among the assembly equipment; Vi spares a glance over the edge of the railing, sees her with her pistol held at the ready, watching the pair as they get to the second set of stairs, which will lead them to Vi’s floor, with the offices. 

Vi ducks into one of the offices that looks a little less used, holds still as the girls pass by the door.

“--I don’t know,” The dark-haired one is saying, “I mean, you haven’t thought about leaving Joel’s garage?”

The other girl, Red, she says, “Well--no. I mean, yes? I guess I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“But you’ll want a house of your own eventually, right?” Dark Hair prods as they go into the office, turn on the lights.

“I don’t know why I would need a whole house. That...seems like too much for just  _ me _ , you know.”

Vi listens, watches as Phinn moves across the floor of the factory, up the set of stairs on the opposite side, so that they’re now crouched, flanking the office door to the left and right. Phinn already looks antsy; outside, the rest of their squad is waiting for a signal, watching that northern window behind Phinn, at the end of the walkway, and waiting for Phinn to give them the go ahead. 

But Vi shakes her head, mouths, ' _ Wait.' _

Dark Hair sits on the desk, and there’s a moment of quiet that Vi tries to understand. She doesn’t know why it seems important, understanding this interaction, but there’s something here, something she feels like she needs to hear.

“Well...you wouldn’t have to be  _ alone,”  _ Dark Hair says, “What if it’s more than just you?”

_ Yeah, Red, what if it’s more than just you? _

“What do you mean?” Red laughs, some mixture of confusion and awkwardness.

“I just mean...you know. In the long run. The big picture. Like...ten years down the road, what do you think your life in Jackson looks like?”

Red Hair pulls in a breath, thinking.

Phinn waves a hand at Vi, trying to get her attention, but Vi waves her off.

“I’ve...honest to god never thought about it,” Red Hair says, “I would be...what, twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? That might as well be a million. I really can’t imagine, y’know...being…”

“Alive?” Dark Hair supplies with a skeptical sound, “You’re gonna make it to twenty-eight, Ellie. Don’t be dramatic.”

“I just mean--that’s so far away. I don’t know what that looks like.”

“What do you  _ want  _ it to look like?”

“I don’t know. I wanna...have a place to paint. With better lighting, y’know. I...I don’t know, I don’t even know what I should want. What do  _ you _ want?”

There’s a silence. Maybe Dark Hair has shrugged? Phinn is glaring daggers at her, but Vi has to hear this. These aren’t murderers. These aren’t brutal, half-insane marauders.

These are  _ people.  _ These are just two people trying to  _ not _ say that they want to spend their lives together, and holy shit, that’s...stupid, and mundane, and it’s everything Vi has ever wanted--to be able to make her own ten-year plan, to be able to make choices for herself. To have a life. A real  _ life. _

“A house,” Dark Hair says, “Windchimes on the porch. Space to have friends over once a month. Maybe…” She pauses, seems to think, “Maybe a family. I don’t know.”

Red-- _ Ellie _ , she’d been called--makes a skeptical noise.

“Well...a  _ family  _ isn’t exactly in my cards, so--”

“That’s not true--”Dark Hair says, “-- _ family  _ is more flexible than ever before.  _ It’s a new world _ , remember? Just look at you and Joel--”

“I don’t--”

“I know,  _ I know,”  _ Dark Hair sighs, “He’s not your dad, you're not his kid, yeah, I heard you. But you know what I mean. There’s no reason, y’know, that you couldn’t have kids of your own someday.”

Vi hears the sound of  _ Ellie _ scuffing her shoes uncomfortably on the floor. 

“I don’t know,” She says, “I’m not--I would really fuck a kid up, I think--”

Phinn waves both hands at her, mouths ' _ What the fuck are you doing _ ?' Vi doesn’t know, doesn’t know what she’s waiting for or why--doesn’t know how to control the pounding in her chest, now that she knows that maybe there’s another kind of life out there, another way of being. 

“--wouldn’t do it alone,” Dark Hair is telling  _ Ellie  _ when Vi catches the conversation again, but Phinn is moving away, toward that northern window, crouched low, and Vi doesn’t know how to stop her. 

She can’t cross in front of the door to get to Phinn--she’ll be spotted for sure.

“Dina,” Ellie says, and there’s something like amusement in her voice, “Are you asking if I’d, like...be into the idea of having a  _ family _ with you?”

_ Of course she is, dummy, _ Vi can’t help but think, even as Phinn raises up into the window at the end of the building, flags her arms. Phinn immediately takes off for the factory floor, scurrying down the metal staircase and into hiding below.

_ Fuck. _

Vi ducks back into the dark office, crouches, waits. Tries to figure out how to fix this, how to stop this without getting either of these two killed--or, more importantly, getting Phinn killed.

Across the broad, open expanse, from the back of the building, there’s a commotion; she’s heard this a million times, almost this exact sequence of sounds--a small explosive being set off, a metal door screeching open.

Red comes flying out of the office first, gun drawn, and  _ Dina  _ is right behind her; they hit the stairs, firearms ready, obviously confused about the source of the noise, but everything is quiet now. The way it always is, just before the next step. Have to draw them in, get them closer, before the next big move.

Vi slips out of the office, looks out over the metal walkway, watches the two of them sticking close together, making their way past the assembly equipment below, toward the back of the building. Phinn edges around one of those pieces of equipment, trying to flank them. 

That’s when the rest of their team outside follows through on the last part of this particular tactic: releasing the infected.

Because nothing causes chaos quite like rage-fueled monsters.

There’s agonized screaming, a flashing of movement, and in they come, a half a dozen infected--a few runners, a stalker, two clickers, all pressing in through the back door in a frenzy, rushing at the two girls with all their wild, screeching fury.

Vi needs to go down. She needs to be there for this part. She’s always there. She should be helping Phinn flank them. Phinn will be counting on her. 

But she can’t move. She really can’t. She’s stuck up here, watching, feeling limp and frozen with indecision.

There’s the sound of gunshots as the girls open fire on the crowd of infected; Phinn slips out from behind the assembly equipment, raises the stock of her rifle, brings it down across the back of the dark-haired girl’s head; she crumples and Red screams something as a runner tackles her. Phinn fires on a clicker bearing down on her, destroys its leg, slows it down; she turns to bring her attention on the girl downed by the runner, but the runner now has a knife in its forehead and is collapsed limply on top of the girl; Red’s gun is drawn up, aimed at Phinn from the floor--

Something cold drops into Vi’s stomach, because she can see it, can see the bullet striking Phinn, punching cleanly in one side of her head and out the other; she’s seen it happen to other people. It’s jarring and sudden and too fast and it’s going to happen to Phinn right now, because she couldn’t move, because she was paralyzed by the mere  _ hint  _ of some better life, a brighter life, a life with windchimes on the porch.

But Holzapfel is there, slipping through the frenzy; in the chaos, she strikes Red with her rifle, and the pistol drops from her hand, clatters across the floor. 

Phinn and Holtzapfel put down the remaining infected with succinct and practiced efficiency. 

But Phinn knows. Phinn knows how close she came, in that second. Vi can tell, because Phinn looks up, across the vast space, looks at Vi still standing there on the metal walkway overhead.

“ _ What the FUCK, Violetta?”  _

Her voice echoes in the cavernous space, but Vi doesn’t have an answer.

She really doesn’t.

\--

_**DINA**_.

There’s something warm trickling slowly down the back of her neck.

Everything is dark, but she can feel it, the slow creep of blood making its way down, pooling in the collar of her jacket. 

She can hear voices. At first they seem far away; through the blinding pain in her head, it sounds as if they’re yelling from the other end of a tunnel. But then they start to become clearer.

“--what the  _ fuck _ are you even talking about, can you even  _ hear  _ yourself--”

“--can  _ you _ hear yourself? These people aren’t fucking  _ marauders _ or  _ bandits _ or any of the bullshit the Core keeps trying to feed us, they’re just  _ people _ \--”

Dina continues to be very still; she can feel something sticky and tight around her wrists--duct tape, maybe. She decides to take the chance, and tries opening her eyes, just the barest amount. 

The light seems almost blinding, seems to pierce straight to the core of the pain radiating through her head. But gradually her eyes adjust, and she tries to figure out what’s going on without moving enough to give away the fact that she’s awake.

Ellie is beside her, pale, unmoving, eyes closed; one side of her face is drenched in blood and Dina’s heart begins to beat hard.  _ Fuck.  _

But as Dina watches, she sees that Ellie’s chest is rising and falling, slow but sure--she’s breathing. She’s alive. 

The arguing is still ongoing; Dina can just make out two girls in uniforms.

“Keep your fucking voice down, Vi--you can’t say shit like that, you just  _ can’t--” _

“It’s the  _ truth _ , you have to see that--Phinn, listen to me--you heard them. You did.”

“Yeah, I heard two idiots arguing over windchimes--”

“No. No, they were talking about a  _ life _ , Phinn. Like, a real one. A real fucking life. Phinn, we could have  _ lives.  _ Like, like--like real humans, and not just...god, whatever the fuck it is we’re doing now.”

“What we’re doing now is staying alive. We have food, and beds, and warmth, and guns, and what the fuck else could we even want, Violetta? What else is there?”

“ _ I don’t know _ , and that’s the problem, Phinn! We don’t even know  _ what we don’t know. _ We’ve been caged up so long, we’re not even  _ real  _ anymore--”

“Oh my god, please stop with the dramatics, this isn’t one of your fucking books--you almost got me killed. You almost got me fucking killed!”

“I’m sorry! Phinn, you know--you know I would never--”

“You promised, Vi. You promised we would always stick together. So whatever it is you’re thinking--you  _ promised.” _

“ _ You  _ promised, too. I want books, Phinn. I don’t want to kidnap people and terrorize families and I don’t want to be held hostage by bullshit ideas--I don’t want to live my entire life at the end of someone else’s  _ gun--” _

“ _ Fuck your books--” _

There’s a harsh silence. Something deeply hurtful’s been said, but the speaker plows on.

“--grow the fuck up, Violetta. This is real life.”

“It’s  _ not _ . This, all of this, Phinn--this is not real life, and you know it. This is...this is just us waiting to die. Waiting for the time it will go wrong. Maybe you’ve made peace with that, maybe you’re okay with the fucked up shit we do every day--but I’m not. I can’t. I can’t, Phinn--no, don’t fucking touch me--just leave me alone--”

There’s the sound of retreating footsteps, and someone cursing--more retreating footsteps. From the back of the building, a faint order thrown out at someone: " _ Holtzapfel, come and get us when they’re awake. And watch the one with the red hair, she’s goddamn fast." _

It gets quiet.

She’s still not entirely sure what happened. They must have been ambushed while fighting the infected. Only, there shouldn’t have been any infected in this building; it had been clear and secure for years now. 

That loud  _ bang _ must have been someone busting open the back doors--and letting infected inside? It seemed insane--who would be stupid or crazy enough to weaponize the infected like that?

Clearly they were well-organized and equipped, and more than a little brutal, whoever they were. But they hadn’t killed Ellie and Dina, so they wanted something. 

Dina prefers not to find out what that  _ something  _ is.

Next to her, Ellie starts to stir, face twisting up in pain. She opens her eyes, and her gaze immediately finds Dina’s. Dina gives the smallest of head shakes-- _ don’t move, they’re watching. _ Ellie goes still.

Ellie’s eyes move quickly over the scene, and she glances over Dina’s shoulder, toward the back door. Dina can’t be sure what she sees, but Ellie immediately shifts, gets herself into a more stable position--Dina glances over her shoulder, finds that  _ Holzapfel _ is looking up at the dingy windows on the far wall, casually eating something that might be beef jerky, it’s hard to tell. 

Ellie moves quickly, as if she knows and has always known exactly what to do. There’s a downed clicker corpse in the floor between them; its head has been shattered by a gunshot, but it still has boney shards of fungi clinging to what’s left of its mangled skull. 

Ellie shifts closer; her hands are taped together, too, behind her back. Dina pushes out against the clicker corpse with her foot, slides it closer to Ellie. Ellie turns herself around, begins sawing at the duct tape with the jagged edge of one of those thin, sharp plates. It feels like it takes forever, but it’s probably only a few seconds before the tape gives, breaks open.

Ellie reaches over, into the skull of a downed runner, and draws out her switchblade; she uses it to slice open Dina’s binding in one hard swipe.

"Are you okay?" Ellie murmurs, presses her hands to either side of Dina’s face.

“I’m fine,” Dina says, even though her head feels like it’s about to split straight down the middle, “Are you?”

“I’ve been better--let’s just get the fuck out of here.”

\--

Holtzapfel doesn’t stand a chance against Ellie and her switchblade. Dina would feel worse about it, about the soft, gurgling sound the woman makes as Ellie lowers her to the ground, throat laid open--but these people seem unhinged, and there will be time for feeling guilty later.

Dina is unsteady on her feet--the world feels like a ship in a storm, like the floor is rocking underneath her. Ellie helps her up, tries to keep her steady--Dina can see the worry in her face, but her head just won’t stop swimming. God, what if that blow had really fucked her up? What if she really was hurt?

She didn’t think so. She thought this would pass. But it was still a disconcerting thought.

The back door is closest, and there doesn’t seem to be any more noise or commotion coming from that direction. Ellie pads ahead, does a quick sweep, comes back to help Dina a little further along.

“Just go on,” Dina says in a hushed voice, “I can take care of myself. Just get out before they come back.”

“They’re gone,” Ellie says, “Looks like the left in a hurry, too. Truck’s still running outside. And, honestly, like I would fucking leave you.”

“I had to try,” Dina says, “Fuck, my head is killing me--”

“If we get out this way, we can go around to the horses, we--”

They get through the doors, down the short concrete steps, and there in the back lot behind the factory is a bizarre scene--a large box truck, with its rolling door thrown open, revealing--nothing. Just empty, and running, but clearly--something had been in there.

“Is that how they’re carrying the infected around?” Dina asks, “In fucking U-Hauls?”

“I don’t...even know. We just need to--shit.”

There’s a girl, lying on the pavement near the truck; she’s in one of those uniforms, deep scarlet and dark navy. She’s bleeding profusely from a wound to her neck; it’s pooling underneath her, soaking into her honey blond hair. 

“What the  _ fuck _ happened here--” Dina mutters.

“I don’t know, I’m just glad another one of them is fucking dead--”

“Wait--” Dina says, “Wait, I--this one. She was arguing with them. She--fuck. Fuck, Ellie…”

Dina sighs, scrubs a hand over her face with pain and exhaustion ans frustration and she can't believe she's going to say this, but she has to say it. 

“Ellie, I think we have to help this one.”


	5. Tough Guy

_**PHINN**_.

She shouldn’t have said that. 

She didn’t mean it. _Fuck your books._ She hadn’t meant it like that. She loved Vi’s books. She loved that Vi loved her books. She hadn’t meant it like that.

But there was something about hearing Vi talk like this that made her feel out of control of her own damn thoughts, made her feel a wild, clawing kind of fear. A kind of fear she wasn’t used to feeling. The kind she hadn’t felt since she was little, and that thing had reached through a window and grabbed her by the hair. 

She’d been helpless then, for a moment--then she’d hacked the thing’s arm off, and refused to be helpless ever again. Refused to be a receptor for fear, a victim of it. Refused to be paralyzed or held captive by it.

But now, listening to Vi, she was afraid again.

Vi won’t stop walking away from her, out the back door of the old brick factory, down the concrete steps, out into the cool, damp night. 

“Violetta-- _wait_ ,” Phinn tells her with increasing frustration, “Just--fucking _hold on--”_

“I don’t want to talk anymore, Phinn,” She says over her shoulder, “I don’t want to talk to _you_. Leave me alone.”

It cuts her straight to the core, down to the center of everything she is--she isn’t sure Vi has _ever_ said anything like that to her before. They’ve had arguments, disagreements; they’ve always bickered and bantered. But at the end of the day--they’ve always been an inseparable unit. In some ways, Phinn _is_ Violetta. 

So it’s like having some part of her own body reject her. Like her own arm asking for space. Her own hand trying to detach itself.

“Just listen to me, Vi,” Phinn insists, “ _Vi--”_

She grabs Vi’s hand; Phinn is vaguely aware of the truck still idling in the parking lot nearby; the muffled groans of more infected are still coming from inside, trapped behind the rolling door. The rest of the squad, Morrison and Hall, should be here somewhere. But right now Phinn isn’t worried about them. She’s only worried about Vi.

Vi tries to pull away from her, but she holds on, steps in close, cups her hands around Vi’s face. Vi looks startled, angry, like she might shove her away--but she also looks just a little bit afraid. Like she’s not sure what Phinn’s going to do.

“Listen to me,” Phinn says with every ounce of gravity she can find, because she has to make Violetta understand this, “You can feel these things, but you _can’t_ say it. You can’t. If any one of these guys hears you saying this stuff, Vi--you know what they’ll do. If it sounds like you’re going to try to run, or that you’re rejecting the Core’s principles--”

“I don’t _care_ ,” Vi says, and there’s a hard edge to her voice that Phinn has never heard before, “I don’t care what they’ll do to me. Phinn--”

Vi reaches up, grabs Phinn’s wrists, and Phinn can’t tell if it’s a moment of affection or aggression, if she’s holding on or just preparing to pull away.

“--I don’t think I can go back.”

“Don’t say that,” Phinn tells her, shakes her head, “It’s you and me, Vi--all the way, until the end, that’s what we said--”

“So come with me,” Vi says, “This is our chance, our one shot at something _real._ We might not get it again--”

“And go where, Vi?” Phinn says, pulling away, looking around them, out beyond the parking lot, into the darkness of the densely packed trees, “Out into the fucking wilderness?”

“I don’t know,” Vi admits, “I don’t _know._ But this place, where these people are from--it sounds like it could be good, Phinn--”

“Oh, and you’re just gonna walk in, hand over your gun, trust some complete strangers living in the fucking Wyoming mountains? _Have you lost your fucking mind?”_

 _“_ Maybe I have,” She says, and for a second it sounds like it--she sounds a little wild, “Or maybe _you_ have. You don’t think about it anymore, do you? What they do to the people we bring back? That we’re just cycling them into this system of misery?”

“The system of misery is keeping everyone alive,” Phinn says determinedly, “That’s the fucking goal, isn’t it? To survive?”

“No, goddamit,” Vi says with frustration, “The goal is to _live._ Phinn, where are you going to be in ten years--”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, we’re not _them_ , don’t try to pull that sappy bullshit on me--”

“No, I mean it--ten years from now, what do you see yourself doing? What do you want?”

Phinn stares hard at her, at her breath turning to vapor in the air, the crimson flush in her cheeks, the desperation in that small furrowing of her brow.

Phinn hasn’t thought about the next ten years. She hardly even thinks more than ten days ahead at a time. What does she want, for the next ten years of her life? She doesn’t know. She’s never tried to imagine it. 

She doesn’t know what she wants in ten years, except that she wants Vi to still be alive. And maybe that’s always been the goal--of all of this, of everything. Maybe she’s always been trying to buy Violetta another ten days at a time.

“Just...still killing stuff?” Vi supplies when Phinn doesn’t answer, “Phinn--this isn’t you. This life we’re living--you’re more than this. We both are.”

“This...this is all I know how to do,” Phinn says, “This _is_ me. This is the only way I know how to take care of myself. This is the only way I know how to take care of _you.”_

Vi stares blankly at her, and Phinn’s heart feels like it’s doing everything it can to break open her ribs. 

“That’s what I want, from the next ten years,” Phinn says, and why does she feel so afraid, as scared as she’s ever been before, every bit as terrified as when she’s fighting a pack of rotting, raging monsters, “I wanna, y’know...I wanna know you’re safe. I wanna...take care of you, Vi.”

Vi doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking back at her with this unreadable expression, something like shock or pain or fear, Phinn can’t tell, can’t figure it out, and it only makes her heart hammer harder in her ears.

“That’s...that was stupid,” She says, “That was a dumb thing to say. It’s not--I didn’t mean--”

“I wanna take care of you, too, Phinn,” Vi says, “That’s what I’m trying to do _now_ , before it’s too late. Before we’re dead, or you’re...just gone. Tell me you don’t feel like you’re losing a little bit of yourself, every day. I’ve seen it in you. And it’s...it’s terrifying.”

“You think I’m terrifying?” Phinn asks skeptically.

“Sometimes,” Vi says softly, “Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t…” Phinn says haltingly, confused, unsure, “I don’t want to be... _that._ But I don’t know if I can be anything else, Vi. I really don’t.”

“So let’s...figure it out,” Vi says, takes a step closer in to her, “We can figure it out _together_. Like everything else. You and me, Phinn.”

She reaches out, picks up Phinn’s hand. Tangles her fingers in Phinn’s, holds tight. It causes a feeling in Phinn, something that feels like a warm buzzing, a fearful contentment; it feels like she’s standing at the edge of a rooftop, and Vi is asking her to take that first step out into empty air. 

And she’s fucking terrified, but she’s done crazier things for Vi. She would do crazier things yet for Vi. She’d do anything for Vi.

Would Vi do the same?

“If I say _no_ ,” Phinn asks quietly, looking down at Violetta’s hand, wrapped in hers, “What would you do?”

Vi doesn’t answer right away. Phinn holds her hand a little tighter, because the _nothing_ means everything.

“Would you come back?” Phinn asks anyway, even though she knows, she already knows, “Would you come back for me?”

“Phinn…” Vi says and her voice is a raw plea, “Just don’t say _no._ Please.”

She catches Phinn’s gaze, refuses to let her look away and Phinn wants to give in, just give her what she wants but there’s a sting there, a deep and building hurt.

Vi would choose this, this place, these people, over her. After everything, all of it, she would choose strangers, a strange place, over Phinn. 

“Phinn…” Vi pleads, “Phinn, I--”

There’s a sound, somewhere behind them, a familiar _pop._ Phinn knows what it is. Knows it almost as well as she knows the sound of her own heartbeat. It’s a gun.

Violetta reels away, stricken; Phinn manages to turn just enough to see him, in the shadow of the box truck, gun still raised: Daniel.

“Vi--” Phinn says in a hollow voice, drops to the ground next to her, “Violetta!”

“It’s fine, it’s _fine--”_ Violetta says, clutching the side of her neck, “Just a graze--Phinn, watch out!”

Daniel grabs the rolling door of the truck and Phinn lunges toward him, pulling her pistol up, trying to stop him. She fires but it just pings against the metal door, ricochets away.

  
“ _Don’t_ ,” Phinn commands him, “Daniel Delong, you’re wanted for crimes against the reassembled republic of the New United States--”

“Oh, give it a fucking rest--” He growls at her, hand still on the lever, “I’m not goin’ back, even if I gotta kill every single one of you--”

He throws the door open, and the wailing screams of the infected inside hit Phinn like a wall. He takes off, sprinting away from the infected pouring out of the truck; two runners and a stalker take off after him, but another two infected rush Phinn, and a third spots Violetta on the ground.

Phinn pivots away from the first runner, narrowly avoids the hands locked into stiff, boney claws; the second slams into her, nearly sends her to the ground. She stumbles toward the truck, wrestles with the wild, foul-smelling thing that was somehow human once.

“VIOLETTA--” 

Gun shots. She glances around the frenzied runner swinging its arms at her, sees Vi firing on the thing attacking her, still clutching her neck with her free hand. It stumbles, falls, lies still. Vi shifts on the ground, raises her gun--another _pop,_ and the second runner, the one preparing to rush Phinn again, falls down, too.

Phinn grapples with the thing now pinning her to the bumper of the truck; she grabs hold of its rotting clothes, heaves it around, forces its head flat against the bed of the cargo hold. She reaches up, grabs the long strip of canvas that serves as a handle for the rolling door. She brings it down as hard as she can, and there’s a soft squelching sound; but even with a broken, misshapen skull, the thing is still clawing at her, screaming, eyes wild and empty. She brings the door down again, and again, until there’s only a sick, red-brown pool of gore and froth where the runner’s head should have been.

“Vi--” Phinn lets the door go, rushes back to Vi, still holding her neck on the ground.

But the two runners and the stalker that bolted after Daniel have doubled back, and are now rushing at the two of them there on the ground. 

“Shit-- _shit,”_ Phinn mutters, looking at Vi; she’s trying hard not to show it, but the blood is seeping between her fingers, running down the curve of her neck, staining the collar of her uniform.

“It’s okay,” Vi says, “I”m fine--I’m fine, do what you gotta do--”

“Don’t--just... _fuck,_ I’ll be right back--I’ll be right fucking back--” Phinn draws her gun, pivots and yells for the attention of the little pack.

She draws them away from Vi, there on the ground, and when their attention is firmly on her, she sprints into the trees; they follow, leaving Vi behind, lying there near the truck.

But Phinn will be right back. She’ll be right back. 

Just hold on, Vi.

\--

_**ELLIE.** _

Helping this asshole is a bad idea.

Ellie just knows it, down in her bones.

It’s a bad fucking idea, but she trusts Dina. For better or worse. And if Dina says it’s the right thing to do--well, Dina’s moral compass seems more reliable than her own, to say the least.

Maria isn’t happy when they get back to town with a strange, injured girl draped over the saddle. A girl in a bizarre, ominous uniform, bearing the same insignias they’d seen on Adelaide and Daniel. Maria meets them at the clinic, where Carrie and Jim, the doctor and her assistant, are already unloading the girl, already rushing to help. 

“What the hell have you all done now?” Maria demands to know.

“This wasn’t us,” Ellie says defensively, “We found her like this. You know, after we were ambushed and captured and escaped, thanks for asking.”

“Ambushed?” Maria asks, “By these NUS folks?”

“Yeah--they released infected into the Wilson factory lookout, as a distraction.”

“That’s...fucking insane,” Maria says under her breath, almost to herself.

“Yeah, I know,” Ellie says.

“But they’re not totally--together,” Dina says, still in the saddle, “The one we brought back--she was arguing with one of the others. She doesn’t want to go back. Something isn’t right with that place, or the rest of these people--but it seemed like the right thing to do. To help her.”

“Or it could bring them all down on us, start a war,” Maria says, “We don’t even know for sure how many are out there right now, let alone how many they have back east, how many they could send, how fast they could get here--”

“She said she wanted _books_ ,” Dina says forcefully, and there’s a tremor in her voice, as if this detail is stuck to her, “I wasn’t going to just leave her to bleed out.”

Maria stares up at Dina, her face a solid, unreadable wall. Then she sighs, rubs the side of her face, as if maybe she feels a headache coming on.

“No...you did the right thing,” Maria concedes, “We’ll figure out the rest as it comes. You two--stay sharp. If _you_ were ambushed, the other lookouts might’ve been ambushed, too. We might be looking at a big fight.”

“Dina’s done,” Ellie says, and Dina stares down at her in angry confusion, “She took a hard hit to the head,” Ellie goes on, not looking up at Dina, “She’s hurt. I’ll go back out, but she’s not--”

“I’m _fine--”_

“Maria,” Ellie says seriously, looking hard at the woman, “Maria, tell her.”

Maria looks up at Dina again, seems to take in the blood-soaked collar of her jacket for the first time. 

“She could hardly walk out of there,” Ellie says.

“I walked just fine, _I’m_ fine, what the hell--”

“Just--let Carrie check you over,” Maria says, “Let Carrie make that call.”

“I don’t need--”

“Let Carrie check you out, or you’re sitting this one out, Dina,” Maria says firmly, “I mean it.”

Dina sighs, glares at Ellie, but nods.

“I’ll be back to check on the girl,” Maria says, “Send for me if she wakes up before then. We need all the information we can get about what we’re facing.”

Ellie nods.

Maria leaves, and Ellie finally turns her attention on Dina. She’s met with a fierce glare.

“You’re not going out there without me,” Dina says flatly, in a way that doesn’t invite any argument, “If you go, I go.”

“Not if you’re hurt,” Ellie says with equal finality.

“I’m not hurt.”

“Then come on down from the saddle,” Ellie steps back to give her the room to do it.

Dina’s jaw tightens, and she seems to go a little paler. She shifts in the saddle, starts to climb down--sways, almost loses her balance.

Ellie steps forward, braces her in the stirrups, grabs one of her hands.

“Anyone ever told you--you’re kind of stubborn,” Ellie sighs, despite the anxious fear bubbling up in her, the persistent hum of worry this is causing her, “Careful--I got you--”

She helps Dina down, holds her up when her legs start to go out under her. 

“Stubborn? Me? No way,” Dina says, winded, weak, “See? Told you--I’m fine. I can walk, just--”

“C’mon, tough guy,” Ellie says, bracing Dina to keep her upright, “Let’s go see what the doc says.”

Dina’s probably going to be fine, she tells herself. A concussion, maybe. She’ll be fine, with some rest. But the blood from her jacket is still damp and it’s smeared across Ellie’s shoulder now, on her hands, everywhere, it feels like. And Ellie isn’t hoping for a war, of course not--but if she gets the chance to find the piece of shit that did this, she’s going to make sure they get what’s coming to them.  
\--

_**PHINN.** _

“I told you,” Daniel says, “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Phinn scrubs a hand over her face. Stares at the stupid fucker cuffed on the ground; he’s thinner than he was in the polaroid they’d been given, his beard is a little wilder, but it’s him. The entire reason for their mission. 

But now there’s a new mission.

“Alright,” Phinn says, nodding, looking at her feet, “Okay. Yeah. You don’t know what I’m talking about--”

Morrison steps forward, puts an arm on her shoulder, “Maxwell, we got what we came for, it’s time to pack up and go home. Orders are to bring him back for trial and execution--he’s gotta be alive for that.”

“First I’m just gonna jog his memory,” Phinn says, gives a small shrug, pulls her pistol and fires a round into one of Daniel's shins.

He wails and folds in on himself, writhes in agony on the pavement of the parking lot outside the factory, not far from the pool of blood Phinn knows belongs to Vi. 

“ _Maxwell--”_

Phinn fires another round into the same leg.

“ _MAXWELL.”_

Morrison pushes her, grabs the front of her uniform, pulls her a few steps away.

“Listen to me, I’ve already sent word to the other squads--we’re packing up. You have to let this go.”

“No, _you_ listen to me--I went out into the woods, killed those infected, and when I got back, Vi was fucking gone--and I’m not going _anywhere_ without her. _I_ caught this _fuck_ because he knows where she is--knows what happened to her--so he’s not going anywhere, either--”

“Maxwell...she was a soldier. We don’t need a body to know what happened--”

“She’s not _dead,”_ Phinn says, and her voice feels too raw, too wild, but she doesn’t care, “I would know. And _he’s_ gonna tell me.”

Morrison sighs. Takes a step back. He’s her commanding officer, but he's not that much older than her--which isn't all that unusual. The turnover rate is kinda high in their line of work. He looks at Daniel, there on the ground.

“You’re a good soldier, Maxwell. You could have a track to the top, you know. Into command. You wanna risk that? Just for some closure--just to find out what you already know?”

Phinn doesn’t answer.

Morrison sighs, turns away. 

“Well, I got no bit of pity for this piece of shit,” He says slowly, “Shoulda hunted him down years ago. Surprised they didn’t hang him right away--the girl he murdered was a _commander’s_ daughter, you know?”

He doesn’t turn around or look to Phinn for any response. Daniel continues to whimper on the ground.

“It’s a shame that I had to kill him during a confrontation, but at least he’s gone, and justice is fulfilled, right? That’s what I’m gonna say, Phinn. The rest of us--we’re packing up. You’ve got one day here to do what you need to do--that’s as long as I can cover for you. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Phinn says, “I get it. That’s all the time I need.”

“Maxwell?” Daniel chokes out suddenly, “Wait--Adelaide’s here, too--Adelaide Maxwell...she’s here--y’all still want her, too, right--she’s here--and they’re protecting her--”

“Adelaide…?” Phinn repeats, feeling as if she’s been punched straight in the gut, “Shut the fuck up--Adelaide’s dead. She’s been dead for years--”

“No,” Daniel insists, “She’s here, she’s fucking here--I swear--”

Morrison glances up at Phinn, surprise mingling with dread.

“Fuck,” He says in a low mutter; he sighs, “ _I guess we’re fucking staying_.”


	6. Eddie

**_Vi._ **

Here in the deep blackness behind her own eyelids, she can feel her blood pumping sluggishly through her veins, like an engine struggling to turn over--just a slow, laborious c _ hug...chug...chug. _

Where’s Phinn? It’s too dark to know. She’s somewhere out there. Vi just has to open her eyes and find her. But she’s so tired, and the dark feels safe. Warm. Easy.

Easier to just keep her eyes closed and wait for the engine to die. 

And then what? 

What about Phinn?

She can almost hear her, that low, uneven voice, a little raspy but always sincere. If she thinks about it, she can almost hear Phinn walking along beside her, singing one of those damned songs.

“ _ Someone told me long ago--there’s a calm before the storm and I know...it’s been comin’ for some time…” _

She does it without thinking, like she doesn’t even know the sound is coming out of her, and Vi’s wondered if it’s always there, in her head--the music. She has a theory, after so many years of watching Phinn idly sing and dance her way through the most mundane tasks--tidying her room, cleaning her guns, digging latrines, performing patrols,  _ killing infected.  _ Vi suspects that Phinn’s brain is a busy, messy, cluttered place, and channeling the songs--it helps her stay focused, in a very weird way. It helps her look away from the things she'd rather not see, the sad and morally ambiguous detritus of their lives.

But more than that, Vi has always taken this habit as a deep, abiding testament to the thing that has always meant the most to her about Phinn--that there’s still  _ joy _ in there, somewhere, under all of the bullshit circumstances heaped on them both. Somehow, despite everything, it’s still there--a tenacious glimmer of hope, a piece of her that hasn't had the happiness wrung out of it yet. 

And maybe she’s always given Phinn a hard time about it, the dancing and the singing, but if she’s honest--for years now, Phinn has had to carry the  _ joy _ for both of them. And she’s done it beautifully. She’s been the only source of  _ fun _ or  _ happy  _ for Vi, without asking--or getting--much of either in return.

But Vi knows she could be happy, too, and that she could give some of that  _ happy  _ back to Phinn, if they could find the right context, the right world in which to live.

With the darkness pressing in against her eyes and her pulse nothing but a slow, steady throb in her chest, her head, she thinks about the two girls and their conversation in the office.

And here, now, in the dark, there’s no risk or damage in it. In thinking about those ten years that might come, or might not, depending on whether or not she decides to open her eyes. 

So she does it. Lets go of the fearful restraints on her imagination. Lets it run wild. Why the fuck not. Maybe it’s been dangerous and depressing to hope, to dream, until now--but it might be the last time she has the chance to see something better. To want something big.

Like a room with shelves. She can see them, in her head and maybe they're a little dusty--but the shelves have books. Good ones, mostly. The kind filled with the sort of words that make her feel things. Big, important things. Words that make her feel connected to the larger, broader human experience, that make her feel like she understands a little more about the context of it all, and where she fits in the world.

But there’s also books that aren’t hers. Books with sword fights and explosions and moody anti-heroes. It’s a much smaller collection, but it’s there, on the shelves, in this room. A room in her house. A room, maybe, in  _ their  _ house.

Is that a thing? Do people just do that? Just live together, in a shared space? Just co-mingle their belongings, until there’s no  _ mine  _ or  _ yours,  _ just  _ ours? _

She hopes it’s a thing. She hopes that happens, that people get to be together that way. Because in the sluggish thumping of her heart she can hear the rhythm of those songs, Phinn’s stupid songs.  _ When it’s over, so they say. It’ll rain a sunny day. I know--shinin’ down like water. _

Phinn, at a kitchen table, eating scrambled eggs and mumbling darkly because she’s never been a morning person. Phinn, laughing at her own joke in a little living room full of their friends. Phinn, cooking dinner, singing quietly to herself. I _ wanna know, have you ever seen the rain--coming down on a sunny day? _

Could Vi have those moments? Could she give those moments to Phinn? She could, couldn’t she? 

Is it worth it? If she opens her eyes now, there’ll be more fighting. There’ll be more dying to be done--maybe by someone else, maybe by her, who knows. There’ll be pain and blood and even then, it may not happen. The house and the shelves and Phinn--they may never all come together like this, the way she sees them now. 

Maybe she could keep her eyes closed, and let the picture be unreal but perfect. Untouched by the ruthlessness of reality. 

Or she can open her eyes and give it a fighting chance at being more. At being a flesh and blood truth. 

Is it worth it?

_ Someone told me long ago--there’s a calm before the storm. _

Phinn. Phinn’s worth it.

\--

**_Ellie._ **

She doesn’t look like much.

She looks younger than she did before, laid out in the bed now, pale and drained, with her blood-drenched uniform and her dark, stained bandages. She looks like a kid. Not an enemy combatant. Not like someone who deserves to bleed out on a dark stretch of pavement.

“I know her,” Adelaide says quietly from the other side of the unconscious girl, “The Walkers’ girl, from over the hill. She was still little when I left. Phinn’s age. Had no idea they’d conscripted her, too.”

“What the hell…” Ellie says, folding her arms over her chest, “They’re just kids.”

“We’re  _ all _ just kids,” Adelaide says softly, watching the bed-ridden girl’s face with something like a wistful mourning, “You. Me. Dina. Jesse. Cat. All of us. None of us deserve this bullshit.”

Ellie bristles at the thought for a moment--she’s not a  _ kid.  _ And then she deflates, sits back in her chair. And for a second she feels it, a certain kind of sadness, a mourning for something she hadn’t even realized she’d lost until this moment.

She thinks about David. The huge, screaming mixture of terror and fury that had swelled in her as she plunged that machete down into him again and again. That white-noise-nothingness that had filled her up, every corner of her--until it had pushed out something else. Something that never did come back.  _ Could  _ never come back.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? About innocence. Happiness, that comes and goes. But innocence? It’s a pane of glass between you and the world, a precarious and fragile shield. Sometimes it cracks slowly under continued pressure, loses a chip at a time, and sometimes it shatters in an instant. But once it goes--it's gone. And the world is never quite the same again.

It's hard for Ellie to say if she’s got any left now, but it can’t be much. And Dina--when did she lose hers? When her dad died? When she had to kill for the first time, defending her mother? When Talia was murdered? It’s upsetting, thinking about a young, vulnerable Dina, struggling alone with the violence, the terror and blood and fire of this world. And it’s only through that lens that Ellie realizes-- _ she _ was young and vulnerable and alone, too. 

For the first time, she feels some little bit of sympathy for her, for the girl sobbing in Joel’s arms, covered in blood and fear, still clutching a dripping machete.

And maybe she even feels a little sorry for the girl in the bed, too.

There’s a metallic, rattling sound. 

“What--?” The girl murmurs, tries to move her hand again--the handcuff rattles against the rail of the bed, “What the hell…?”

“Violetta?” Adelaide says, leaning forward, “Violetta Walker?”

Ellie steps in, too, eager to start asking questions and getting answers.

“Who--? Where the fuck am I--?” She blinks against the bright lights overhead, and her eyes finally fall on Adelaide; it seems impossible, given the amount of blood she’s lost, but she goes even paler.

“Vi, it’s...it’s Adelaide,” Adelaide says gently, and Ellie finds it intriguing--she hasn’t seen much about Adelaide that she would describe as  _ gentle _ , and yet here she is, speaking softly to this girl, “Do you remember--?”

“They said you were  _ dead _ ,” Vi interrupts, “Phinn thinks you’re dead. Oh, fuck.  _ Fuck.” _

“I made it out,” Adelaide says, and Ellie notices that she doesn’t elaborate.

“And, what--came to Wyoming?” Vi asks, and there’s a note of skepticism, anger.

“Not...directly,” Adelaide says, “It took a while. I haven’t even been here all that long.”

“But you got out,” Vi repeats, “You got out, and you...you left us there. Left Phinn there.”

“I…” Adelaide falters, looks away, “It was complicated.”

“No, it wasn’t. You left Phinn. She was fucked up over it for  _ months. _ You killed her dad, the least you could have done was get her out of that hellhole.”

“I didn’t--it wasn’t like that, I was trying to save  _ her _ \--Dad jumped in front of the shot, it was an accident--”

“Oh, so you just changed your mind, then? Decided-- _ fuck saving Phinn, I’ll save myself?” _

Adelaide stands up from her chair, anger and frustration flashing hot across her face. But the wounded girl stares back at her boldly, unflinching, despite being the one confined to a hospital bed. There’s a sharp, unrelenting edge to her gaze, an unexpected ferocity behind her eyes. 

Maybe she’s just a kid. Maybe she doesn’t look the part, with her blonde hair and her freckles and her warm hazel eyes--but she’s a survivor, a fighter. More than that, maybe. A protector. Someone for whom  _ surviving  _ isn’t the goal, just a means to an end, and that end is  _ protecting  _ something or someone important.

Because Ellie’s seen that look before. She’s seen it on Joel more times than she can count. The thought is a tiny, distracting punch in the gut--the idea that  _ her _ survival has been Joel’s goal for years now, and his own survival has been incidental, a happy bonus. It’s a heavy thought, but she doesn’t have time to look at this epiphany closely right now--there are other things that need priority.

Adelaide’s anger subsides as quickly as it came; she deflates with guilt, closes her hands over the rail of the bed, leans heavily against it.

“Yeah, I left Phinn,” She says quietly, “I was fourteen. I was scared. I had one shot at getting out. I was always gonna come back for her--”

“Look, the family drama stuff is super fucking interesting--” Ellie interrupts, “But there are some things we need to know--”

“First there are some things  _ I  _ need to know,” Violetta says, “Like where am I and how did I--wait.  _ Wait.  _ It’s you, you’re the one who almost shot Phinn--”

“Because she was about to bash my damn head in,” Ellie reminds her, “I’m also the one who found you bleeding out in a parking lot and saved your life by bringing you back to Jackson--which may or may not have started a war with your psycho West Virginia militia friends--”

“And, what, you want me to tell you all about them? How many there are? What tactics they’re gonna use?”

“Yeah, that’d be nice, actually,” Ellie says.

Vi stares hard at her, and there’s a hard set to her jaw, a stiffness that says she’s trying to decide if Ellie can be trusted, trying to make the kind of decision that’s going to change the course of her future.

“Look,” Ellie says, “I saw you up there. In the factory. You couldn’t move. Didn’t wanna move. And the girl that was with me? She heard your argument. It can’t be easy, breaking from what you know--but if what you’re looking for is a better life...well, you’ve found it. Now you just gotta jump in, feet first, and hope for the best.”

“It’s true,” Adelaide speaks up again, “This place, these people...it’s not perfect. No place is. But it’s damn close. You and me and Phinn--we can have new lives here. Be new people. But we have to protect it first.”

Violetta stares up at the ceiling, closes her eyes.

“If I help,” She says slowly, “If I help--I get to stay? And I’m not gonna be…” She lifts her hand, and the handcuff rattles, “I’m not gonna be a prisoner?”

“No,” Ellie says, “I swear. Not a prisoner. Just a person. Here, in Jackson.”

“Phinn, too,” Violetta says, “Phinn gets to stay, too--”

“She’s the one who bashed Dina in the head, isn’t she?” Ellie asks, angry about it all over again, “She tried to kill us--”

“ _ Phinn stays, too, _ ” Violetta repeats,”You don’t understand. She was only following orders--”

“Orders  _ you _ chose  _ not _ to follow,” Ellie points out.

“Yeah, okay, but--Phinn is different. They took us from home, trained us, fucked with our heads. And Phinn...she’s good at it. At being a solider. She was just doing what a good solider would do…” Violetta lays her head back against the pillow, as if the exhaustion is finally starting to get to her; she closes her eyes, “But she’s more than that. Like, she does this thing where the first bite of really good food--it makes her dance,” Violetta gives a small, sad laugh, “It’s so stupid but so  _ good. _ Her heart is always with every underdog--she loves it, seeing someone beat the odds. She’s taken more than her fair share of beatings for doing the right thing. She sings in the shower and it’s been years since I’ve seen her even flinch when it comes to infected--but spiders freak her the fuck out. She doesn’t like reading, but she likes stories. She…” Violetta pauses, and maybe her voice is breaking, or maybe she’s just tired, it’s hard to say, “She’s good. She is. Even if she can’t remember. And she  _ stays.  _ Or I don’t give you any information at all.”

Ellie isn’t sure what to do with all of this information. There’s something familiar here, something she can understand, if she looks at it the right way. 

She had almost been a solider once, too. Back in Boston. Would she have been good at following orders, too? Would she have done what she was told, and left the hard questions for someone else?

Maybe. It’s not hard to imagine. Could this have been Dina, trying to describe her to someone else? Trying to save her from herself?

Violetta doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Quite literally. Ellie knows the girl is desperate to stay, doesn’t want to go back--she has no negotiating power here. If she doesn’t help them right now, she loses no matter what. A literal prisoner if they win, a metaphorical one if they lose and she has to go back.

But Ellie sighs. Nods reluctantly.

“Alright,” Violetta takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, sounds relieved, “Here’s what I can tell you.”

\--

**_ELLIE._ **

Carrie leans forward, shines a flashlight into each of Dina’s eyes in turn. Ellie watches with concern; when Carrie’s not looking, Dina sticks her tongue out, makes a  _ this is dumb and unnecessary _ kind of face at Ellie. So she can’t be too bad off.

“Concussion,” Carrie says shortly, “Not a bad one, but worse than I’d like. You’re homebound, two days, unless there’s more nausea--she needs someone to keep an eye on her through the night,” Carrie turns to Ellie, “You’re not in great shape yourself but do you think you can handle the job or what?”

“Yeah, Ellie--can you keep an eye on me through the night or what?” Dina asks, gives a small laugh. 

Carrie looks between them, gives a small sigh.

“I...gave her some pain medicine. Between that and the general concussion...she’s probably gonna keep saying stuff like that.”

“I’m  _ fine _ ,” Dina says, “ _ Fiiine.  _ Really fine. That’s a weird word, right? Fine. Fuh-fuh-fine--”

“Okay, buddy,” Ellie says, grinning despite the circumstances, “Yeah, I’ll look after her, doc.”

“Good. And you don’t have any nausea? Dizziness? Confusion?” Carrie asks Ellie suspiciously.

“Nope. Head hurts like a bitch, but other than that, I’m okay.”

“Alright. Take her home. Let her get some sleep. Bring her back if there’s any vomiting, fever, confusion--er, increased confusion…” Carrie corrects herself, because Dina is staring at her and nodding very intently, but there’s a glaze in her eyes that says she’s not really taking in what’s being said. She keeps nodding, even after Carrie has stopped talking.

Carrie and Ellie exchange a look.

“Hey, don’t--I’m not  _ confused _ ,” Dina says, “I’m fine. C’mon, Eddie, let’s go home--”

“ _ Eddie?” _ Ellie repeats.

“What?”

“You called me  _ Eddie.” _

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“...I might be a little confused,” Dina confesses.

“Yeah, okay, champ,” Ellie says, and she helps Dina up by the arm.

“Did she tell you anything?” Carrie asks, “The militia girl?”

“Yeah,” Ellie says, “Maria’s in there now. It sounds like they have a fair amount of soldiers, but there’s a snow storm coming in tonight--if they’re gonna do anything, it probably won’t be until morning, at least.”

“Ellie…” Dina murmurs, leaning heavily against Ellie, “I’m...I’m really tired.”

There’s a pained sincerity in it that gives Ellie a sense of urgency.

“I know,” Ellie says, “We’re going home right now, promise. Just stay with me.”

\--

Outside, the temperature has dropped dramatically, and there’s a sharp, cold wind cutting through the streets. But it’s not far, so Ellie pulls one of Dina’s arms over her own shoulders, gently guides them both in the right direction. 

Dina is quiet, and Ellie isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But then the first tiny, delicate flakes of snow begin to drift down, and Dina looks up, watches it come down for a minute as they walk--or, mostly, as Ellie walks for them.

“It’s snowing,” She says shortly.

“Yeah,” Ellie says, at least a little preoccupied, “It is.”

There’s a moment of silence, silence seemingly made deeper by the falling snow.

“You can’t go fight without me,” Dina says, “You can’t. If you go, I go.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Ellie says, “But I don’t think you’d be much help in a fight right now.”

“No,” Dina concedes with a heavy disappointment, “No, I guess not. Ellie...you can’t die on me.”

“Whoa,” Ellie says, “I’m not...I’m not dying, Dina. We’re gonna be fine.”

“I  _ need _ you, Ellie,” Dina says it with deep, fearful urgency, “You can’t go out and get killed, okay? You can’t leave me--”

“Dina--” Ellie stops, makes sure to look into her face--tired and scared and surprisingly vulnerable in the moment, “--I’m not going anywhere. Cross my heart. Scout’s honor.”

“ _ What’s  _ honor?” 

“ _ Scout’s.  _ I don’t know, it’s something Joel says, it’s--I don’t know, I’m just saying...I mean it.”

“There has to be another way,” Dina says, “There has to be something other than  _ fighting.” _

Ellie pauses, looks at the snow slowly beginning to collect in the ruts and divots of the street.

“We could give her back,” Ellie says quietly, seriously, “Hand her over. Give them whatever they want. Violetta, probably Adelaide, too. That might be enough to avoid a fight. I don’t know. I could talk to Maria. I could.”

Dina closes her eyes, thinking, feeling.

“I’ll do whatever you want me to,” Ellie says, just a small whisper, “I will.”

“We can’t do that though,” Dina says with a mournful kind of resignation, “Can we?”

Ellie gives a small shake of her head.

“Because we’re the good guys.”

Ellie shrugs, says, “I’m trying. I really am.”

Dina looks out at the snow, sways a little on the spot. But her eyes are clearer now--and a little more sad.

“They deserve a shot, right? At this? At what we take for granted every day?” She asks.

Ellie isn’t sure she totally understands what Dina means, but it sounds like the right sentiment.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Dina nods.

Then she sways some more, and Ellie catches her; they start walking again, and Ellie’s place comes into view within a few moments; it's quiet and still there in the dark, with the snow falling thick around it.

“Oh, thank god,” Dina mutters with relief, as if it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, “I feel like I could sleep for days. Remind me to never do this concussion thing again.”

“Yeah, it’s at the top of my priority list,” Ellie says, reaching for the door knob with one hand, keeping Dina steady with the other, “ _ Eddie  _ is gonna haunt me for a while, quite honestly…”

She helps Dina inside, pulls the door closed behind her. Locks it.

Later, she’ll think about it and realize with certainty that if she’d been less distracted, or less tired, or less stupid, she might have seen it, there in the light dusting of snow at the edge of the building.

Footprints.


	7. Don't Look Back

**_PHINN._ **

Daniel coughs wetly, leans over into the floor, spits a thick, sticky mass of blood onto the concrete.  _ Have you ever seen the rain. _

There’s a tangle of music in Phinn’s head now.  _ I ain’t gonna take none of your puttin’ me down.  _ All the melodies bleeding together, all the words overlapping into a fevered orchestra of nonsense.  _ Shinin’ down like water.  _

Yet somehow it isn’t disorienting or uncomfortable. No, instead she feels more focused and clear, more sure than ever before of what to do and how to do it.  _ I know it’s been comin’ for some time. _

_ I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain? _

She crouches down in front of him; his face is already battered and bruised, one of his eyes swollen shut, beard matted in blood.  _ Someone told me long ago.  _ But they’re only just getting started.

“Ready to tell me what happened yet, bub?” She asks him quietly.

“I fuckin’ killed her,” He spits out over his split lip, “I told you, I circled back, I fuckin’ killed her--”

“Yeah?” Phinn says calmly, “What’d you do with the body?”  _ There’s a calm before the storm and I know-- _

“Dragged it into the woods,” He says in a hoarse whisper, staring up at her with what might be relish, enjoyment, “You’ll never fuckin’ find her, you’ll never know, you’re fucked--” He starts to laugh, but it becomes a pained, broken sound.

Phinn nods, stands up slowly.  _ \--it’s been comin’ for some time. _

_ I put a spell on you and I wanna know have you seen the fortunate one shinin’ down like water-- _

She walks over to one of the assembly machines nearby, some complex monster built by people who are long dead now; she reaches in, puts both hands around a long length of rusted, hollow metal--pulls hard. It breaks free. 

_ Who’ll stop the rain shinin’ down on a sunny day because I ain’t no fortunate one--- _

“She’s not dead,” Phinn says, feeling the weight of the metal pipe in her hands, “I would know. So what happened?”

“You wouldn’t know  _ shit,  _ you little psycho bitch--”

_ I ain’t no senator’s son no fortunate one yesterday and days before-- _ She winds up, brings the pipe down on his injured leg.

He lets out a strangled sound.

“Someone took her,” Phinn says, “These people took her, and I need to know more about them. Where they would keep her, how to get there, what kind of weapons they have--”

“Go fuck yourself--she’s dead, and I fuckin’ enjoyed killing her--and I’m gonna enjoy killing you, too--”

_ Til forever on it goes through the circle fast and slow I know it can’t stop I know it can’t stop I know it can’t stop-- _

She hits him hard across the face, leaves behind a trail of blood and rust across his cheek; the dull sound of the impact rings in the open space of the factory.

“Ah-- _ fuck…” _ The words fall out of him, and his bravado falters, replaced by the first real signs of fear.

“ _ Tell me,”  _ Phinn says, emphatic but not erratic, not out of control. Not yet.

“Gonna have to do...better than that…” He laughs, “You got nothing, you don’t know nothing, you don’t have this in you--you’re just a fucking kid--you’re gonna give up before I do--”

_ It can’t stop I know it can’t stop I know I can’t I can’t stop I can’t I can’t-- _

She jams the jagged, rusted end of the pipe down into that injured, pulpy mess of his leg, feels it jam against the concrete underneath; he screams and she’d be lying if she said she didn't feel some satisfaction from the sound.

“ _ Fuck...Jesus fuckin’ Christ…” _ He says through clenched teeth, “ _ Fuck-- _ they took her, they did--the two girls you let go...ah, shit, my fuckin’ leg…” He leans away from the rod, still impaled in his leg, standing upright.

“I didn’t let them go, they fucking killed Holtzapfel and  _ escaped--” _

“Yeah, and whose fault was that?” He spits at her, “Out here arguin’ over stupid bullshit instead of doin’ your damn job, arguin’ because your girlfriend wants to leave you and you can’t handle it--”

_ I put a spell on you you’re mine you’re mine stop the playin’ that you’re doin’ I ain’t lyin’-- _

“You ain’t even good at being a soldier. Can’t look after prisoners, can’t protect anybody, can’t do fuckin’  _ shit--” _

She reaches out, grabs the rusted rod in his leg--gives it a hard, violent wrench.

“ _ FUCK,”  _ He screams and tries to twist away but he can’t, “Fuck, fuckin’--god, she’s as good as fuckin’ dead anyway. The girl that took her? She’s a fuckin’ basketcase. She’s probably fuckin’...peelin’ her outta her skin as we speak--”

_ Some folks inherit star-spangled eyes oh they send you down to war they just want more more more more more-- _

Phinn reaches for the hatchet in her belt.

“Where?” She says it quiet but the noise in her head is too loud now, she can hardly think, can hardly hear, “ _ Tell me where, you murdering fuck--” _

His head is drooping, chin hitting his chest, and he doesn’t respond right away.

“ _ FUCKING TELL ME,”  _ She demands again, grabs a handful of his hair, pulls his swollen, bleeding face back to look at her.

There’s something almost like a smile on his face. He gives a noise that might be a laugh. The laugh gets stronger.

“I never meant to kill her, you know,” He says thickly, “Alyssa. Back home. It was an accident--”

“You stabbed her,” Phinn reminds him, “That’s not a fucking accident.”

“She didn’t  _ choose me _ ,” Daniel says, “We were in love, and then one day--she just  _ chooses  _ someone else? That’s fucked up, isn’t it? It’s fucked up, and I snapped--but I didn’t mean--”

“ _ I don’t have time for this,”  _ Phinn tells him, “Tell me where to find the girl who took Vi or I swear to fucking god--”

“What? You’ll kill me? God, I fucking hope so--” He laughs again, wet and unbridled.

_ I wanna know who’ll stop the rain who’ll stop the rain they just want more I can’t stop  _

_ I can’t stop _

_ I can’t stop _

She seizes the ankle of his uninjured leg. There’s a feeling in her, something she’s never had before; it’s some tangled mass of desperation and fear and urgency and blazing, searing fury, an anger so deep and cutting that it turns straight to hate, straight to pure, callous indifference. 

And there’s freedom there, in indifference.

Freedom to do anything.

To do exactly what needs to be done.

_ Oh, I know, it’s been coming for some time. _

She stretches out that leg and brings the hatchet down; it punches through flesh and clangs against the floor underneath, sends a shockwave up her arm; he’s screaming, hoarse and wet and rattling but fuck him--fuck this asshole standing between her and Violetta, between her and what she needs to do, fuck him,  _ fuck him-- _

She pulls the hatchet free and a wet spray of blood comes with it, spills across her face; but she’s not done. She brings it down again, again, again.  _ Don’t go walkin’ slow cause the devi’s on the loose better run through the jungle-- _

The blood pools around her boots.

She kicks the foot away, still clad in a dirty boot, freed now of its owner; her body aches, exhausted and driven only by adrenaline and rage. Barely even human. She’s hardly even real and it doesn’t matter--nothing matters except getting to Vi, except punishing anyone who might have hurt her.  _ Better run through the jungle and don’t look back to see don’t look back don’t look back-- _

_ Don’t look back. _

“Oh, god…” He whimpers, “Oh, Jesus.”

She kneels down in front of him, takes the bloodied hatchet, uses it to lift his chin and look into his blood-spattered face.

“Fucking. Tell. Me.”

“You fuckin’ did it,” He says, and he sounds strangely relieved, eyes glued to his shattered, mutilated leg, “I’m...I’m fuckin’  _ out _ , ain’t I? This is fuckin’ it...I knew you could do it, knew it...I...shit. Yeah. Okay. Big house. Good sized windows on the front. Blue. Gonna look like somethin’ out of a goddamn painting. Too good to be real. Go to the garage in the back.”

She lets his head drop, stands up.

“Thanks…” He chokes out in a broken warble, “Thanks. I ain’t goin' back now. I ain’t goin' back. Thank the fuckin’ Lord…”

Phinn doesn’t have anything to say. Has already almost forgotten he’s even there. Maybe he wanted this the whole time--maybe he was desperate to do whatever it took to avoid seeing the Core and the NUS and West Virginia again.

But it doesn't matter now, because she’s already almost at the door.

“She ain’t gonna choose you,” He says at Phinn’s back, “She ain’t gonna choose you and you know it, you do…what are you gonna do, huh...what are you gonna do when she don’t choose you--you’re gonna snap, just like me--”

She pauses. Jams the hatchet back into her belt. 

"We ain't so goddamn different, are we?" He laughs, but the laughing gets quiet, becomes the sound of labored, faded breathing.

She’s not like him. She isn’t.

But she doesn’t have time to think about it. About what’s going to happen. She has somewhere to be.

_ Don’t go walkin’ slow, cause the devil’s on the loose-- _

_ Don't look back. _


	8. Bad Moon Rising

**_PHINN._ **

“There,” Phinn says, handing the binoculars over to Morrison, “Set the last one there, in the big building. Looks like a dining hall, maybe. Flush everyone toward the center, and you’ll find her.”

“Same thing we did in the Cannonsburg settlement,” Morrison says, thinking, “Couple of fires. Rush everybody out. Keep ‘em confused. It could work.”

“It  _ will  _ work,” Phinn says confidently, loading her pistol before tucking away several extra magazines.

“And where will  _ you _ be? You should be leading one of the squads in,” He says, “That’s your job.”

“I have to find Vi,” She says, “After that, I’ll do whatever you want.”

“And what if you can’t find her, Maxwell?” Morrison asks, “What if she’s dead, or just gone?”

“She’s not,” Phinn says very matter-of-factly, “I’ll find her.”

“You’re not asking permission, are you?” He asks.

She stops. Looks up at him. It’s a punishable offense, insubordination. He could even declare her  _ AWOL _ . He could call it full blown  _ mutiny-- _ execute her on the spot and barely have to fill out any paperwork over it. 

“Morrison--I have to bring her back. After that, if you want to cuff me up, ship me back to the Core for trial, that’s fine. But I  _ have  _ to do this.”

He stares her down, and his hand shifts on the pistol at his hip. But then that hand drops, and he nods.

“Do what you have to,” He says, “But the mission is still  _ finding Adelaide.  _ I’m a little surprised you’re not more invested in that.”

“You’re surprised I don’t give a shit one way or the other about a sister who apparently fucked off to go on a road trip with a murdering asshole?”

“Well...when you put it that way.”

“Yeah,” Phinn says, checks that her hatchet is secure in her belt, “Fuck her. Vi’s more important.”

She sees Morrison shake his head with something like pity--he doesn’t believe Vi is still alive, but he wouldn’t understand even if Phinn tried to explain. 

She looks out over the town, glittering in the late evening light. She’ll burn it all down if she has to--whatever it takes. 

She nods her head in time to the song her brain pushes forward.

“ _ I see a bad moon a-risin’,”  _ She sings to herself as she kneels down, checks her backpack, tucks a second pistol into her boot, “ _ I see trouble on the way.” _

_ Don’t go out tonight, _

_ Well, it’s bound to take your life. _

_ There’s a bad moon on the rise. _

_ \-- _

**_ELLIE._ **

It’s quiet, here inside her little room. There are dishes over in the sink, a stack of comic books spread over the desk, a set of watercolors left open on the coffee table in front of the couch; the TV is on but it’s just stuck on the DVD menu for some dumb movie or other. Ellie hadn’t really paid attention, had just needed the little bit of noise in the room at the time to help settle her nerves, help keep her from feeling like the silence was going to eat her alive.

She probably should have tried to get some sleep, but there wasn’t much point in even trying. Instead she’s sitting up on the couch, watching Dina. 

Dina, who’s curled up tightly in Ellie’s bed. She looks relaxed now, still and comfortable, but Dina’s not a peaceful sleeper, never has been--Ellie knows that. The evidence is there at the end of the bed--the blankets all kicked off, gathered and tangled up in a violent heap. 

She talks in her sleep.  _ Fights  _ in her sleep, sometimes. Ellie’s had to wake her up before, call her out of a confused, drowsy frenzy.  _ Nightmare _ \--that’s always Dina’s singular explanation; she never expounds or explains and as Ellie watches her now, she realizes she wants to know more. Wants to ask. Doesn’t know why she hasn’t asked before, in fact.

Ellie knows what fuels her own nightmares--so maybe she just didn’t want to know the origins of Dina’s. Maybe it felt like too much before now. Too much to try to carry the burden of her own nightmare fuel  _ and  _ Dina’s. Too much to know about young, scared Dina and the traumas that carried her here, to Jackson. Better to pretend Dina had always been safe and secure and sheltered and happy.

But that’s not the truth and Ellie finds that some part of her needs to know. That there’s suddenly room in her for it. An open space, where there had been a brick wall before.

The situation between them has been convoluted and more than a little fucked up; Cat had once accused Dina of manipulating Ellie, of only wanting Ellie around for validation, but if that were true, Dina had put in a lot of work for it. Dina had always been the one patiently taking on Ellie’s pain, a little at a time, listening to the things no one wanted to hear, the things no one else wanted to bear. Pulling at the bricks in Ellie’s walls with a gentle tenacity that Ellie couldn’t appreciate until now. And Ellie--well, Ellie was realizing that she hadn’t been reciprocating.

She’d been avoiding the hard parts. Taking, and not giving back. Not asking the right kind of questions, not following through on upsetting answers, answers like the flat, simple  _ nightmare.  _

She should have been asking, all this time. Because she’s finding that whatever she thought she felt for Dina, whatever she’s felt for these past few years, it’s changing. Quietly becoming something deeper, more profound--which she didn’t even think was possible.

Maybe she’d had a crush on Dina, before. Maybe she thought Dina was pretty, and fun, and charismatic. Maybe they got along and Ellie felt real and alive and human with her. But now? Now she needs to see more than that. Now she wants the tough parts, too. Wants to know why Dina wakes up fighting--needs to know what those nightmares are about. 

She wants to take on some of that pain, help shoulder the burden. 

She’s never wanted that before. Not with anyone. 

In the bed, Dina stirs ever so slightly.

“So you just gonna weirdly watch me sleep all night…” She says, voice thick with sleep, eyes still closed, “Or are you gonna come to bed, stalker?”

“Doc said to keep an eye on you,” Ellie says, leaning forward against her knees, “That’s what I’m doing.”

“Sure, but...you can keep an eye from over here, right?” She reaches out, pats the empty space there in the bed.

Ellie gives a small, resigned sigh. Goes to the bed, climbs into that empty space. She untangles the blankets, pulls them back up over Dina without asking.

“Thanks, Boston,” She says, sounding surprised but sincere.

She pulls the blankets up a little further over her shoulder, burrows into them with a comfortable sigh. But slowly, she opens her eyes, looks for Ellie, lying there across from her. 

“How’re you feeling?” Ellie asks quietly, searching Dina’s eyes for the answer, the real answer.

“Better now,” Dina says in a small voice.

“Good,” Ellie whispers back, because now that she’s lying down, with Dina close by like this--she’s suddenly feeling the fatigue. Feeling comfortable and warm.

“Hey...you never answered me, you know.”

“Answered what?” Ellie asks.

“You know…” Dina says, taking a deep, tired breath, letting it out slowly, “The thing about having a family. Like, someday.”

“Yeah…” Ellie says, smoothes out some of the wrinkles in the sheets between them, “Things got a little wild there for a minute right after that.”

“Well?” Dina says, “What’s the verdict?”

Ellie studies her face there in the dark, the curves and shapes she knows so well--maybe as well as she knows her own face now. Dina watches her expectantly and she doesn’t know what to say, how to say it. How to say  _ yes _ and  _ no  _ at the same time. How to say  _ yes, but I’m afraid.  _

Because she’d never been able to see it before, the future. She lived day to day, moment to moment. She never thought about being old, because being old was a fantasy. Nearly as outlandish and unreal as going to the moon. She hadn’t realized, until that conversation with Dina, that she’d made an assumption a long time ago--an assumption that she would die young, like everyone else. It was unspoken, unarticulated inside her, but it was there.

But now? Now that Dina had brought it up--she couldn’t stop thinking about it. About the future, about the  _ long term.  _ About a  _ long term _ that involved Dina.

And it was a thought, a vision, so good that it hurt, down in her bones. The kind of thing she couldn’t possibly have, because it was too perfect. The kind of thing she would absolutely fuck up, one way or the other. 

And a kid? Jesus. She would fuck up a kid so badly. She couldn’t possibly be trusted with another human person’s life. With their emotional and mental wellbeing. What lunatic would ever hand her a kid, a baby, and believe that she was capable of turning them into a good, happy person? 

And like that, she thinks of Joel. Of sitting in that museum, in that little spaceship. She thinks of the way she felt in that moment, as if the entire world revolved around her--just for a second. The way she felt seen, and known, and important. The way she felt happy.

Loved.

_ I do okay? _

He did. He did do okay.

Maybe she could do okay, too.

She reaches out, tucks a dark wave of hair behind Dina’s ear. She takes a moment to think, to make sure the words are right. They have to be right.

“You just broke up with Jesse,” She says in a quiet, hoarse voice, “And--”

“This isn’t about Jesse--” Dina says with an uncharacteristic note of desperation.

“I know,” Ellie says quickly, “I know. I just...there are people out there, like Jesse, who could...who could be much better at it, you know…” Ellie lets her hand fall back to the sheets, drops her gaze down as well; she pulls at a small, frayed hole there absently, “Better for you. Better for a family.”

Dina continues watching her, and when Ellie looks back up, there’s something in her face that looks like fear.

“What if I don’t want them?” She asks Ellie, “What if I want  _ you?” _

“Do you?” Ellie asks with some amount of skepticism.

“What if I do?”

Ellie looks back down at the sheets, nods slowly. She gives a small smile, the kind she couldn’t suppress if she wanted.

“I mean...if you did. Hypothetically. Then...I guess that would change things, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Dina says, “Would it?”

“Please,” Ellie says with a soft, self-deprecating laugh, “Tell me one thing I haven’t been willing to do for you.”

“Hm,” Dina says, thinking, “You wouldn’t try my zucchini bread.”

“It was  _ burnt, _ ” Ellie says in self-defense, “And it had  _ zucchinis _ in it. Zucchinis do not belong in bread, Dina.”

“I followed Esther’s recipe,” Dina protests, “I don’t know what happened. And even Joel thought the zucchini bread was good. Although I’m pretty sure Esther just didn’t tell him it had zucchinis? He kept calling it  _ not-banana bread.” _

Ellie laughs, and it hits her, how much she misses Joel.

“Listen,” She says to Dina quietly, “You have to get some sleep. I don’t know what tomorrow’s gonna be like.”

“Yeah,” Dina says, and her eyelids are already heavy, drifting closed, “You need to sleep, too.”

“I will,” Ellie promises, “Honest.”

\--

When Ellie wakes up, it’s with the sense that some time has passed--but she isn’t sure how much. It’s still dark--in front of her, Dina’s face is still painted all in soft shades of gray. But something has woken her up.

The temperature in the room has dropped; she sits up, gathers all the blankets that Dina has once again kicked off--covers her back up. Climbs out of the bed gently, trying not to wake Dina up. She pulls her knife from the bedside table, tucks it into the pocket of her jeans.

There might be a sound coming from outside, but she can’t be sure. It’s a soft sort of popping, a gentle cracking noise she can’t quite place. 

She goes to the door, looks out the little window.

The world outside has been transformed--coated in a thick layer of soft, white snow. There in the dark, the sheet of white almost seems to glow with its own soft, radiant light.

She grabs her coat, throws it on. Steps into her boots. Opens up the door. The snow crunches underfoot, seems too loud in the stiff, snowy silence.

But there’s another sound. That soft cracking. It’s coming from around the corner of the building, where the garbage cans are kept. She holds onto the knife in her pocket, pulls the door closed behind her carefully. She takes the next steps with caution, walking toward the corner.

When she looks around the edge of the building, the trash cans are there, where they’re supposed to be--but one of them is full of huge, leaping flames, licking up the side of the building, leaving huge streaks of black up the wall. 

_ Fuck, Dina’s in there-- _

She rushes forward in a panic, grabs the can, yanks it away from the wall and out into the snowy yard. It continues belching flames; the can itself is melting, and she yanks her hand away, burned by the molten plastic.

It’s then that she registers movement from the corner of her eye.

In the next second, the air has completely left her lungs and she’s crashing hard through the snow, her back slammed against the hard, frozen ground, perilously close to the burning trash can. 

It’s the girl from the factory, the one who attacked Dina; she has a knee in Ellie’s stomach and is winding back to punch Ellie while she’s down.

Ellie kicks out against her with a snow-packed boot; she falls back, into the trash can. It topples over, spills its blazing contents out into the snow. Ellie slips in the snow but gets her feet under her, starts to bring her knife from her pocket. 

Quick, too quick, the girl scoops up a hunk of snow and some kind of burning debris and launches it straight into Ellie’s eyes; Ellie pivots away but feels the burn of embers on her face. She reels away, trying to clear it off her skin, and only barely sees it when the little psycho pulls out a hatchet, tries to swipe at her leg with it.

Ellie moves at the last second; the blade grazes her shin but she hardly notices. The girl is already swinging again, and Ellie barely misses getting disemboweled. 

“Where the fuck is she?” The girl demands, circling Ellie like a half-feral cat, and Ellie understands--this must be  _ Phinn _ , has to be Phinn, “Where’s Vi? What did you do to her? I swear to god, if you’ve hurt her--”

“I didn’t do anything to her--”

“I don’t wanna hear your shit, just tell me where she  _ is,  _ goddammit--”

She starts to reach for the pistol holstered at her side and Ellie knows she can’t let a gun come into play here; she dives at her, takes a wild swing. It connects hard with Phinn's chin and they both tumble back in a wild, fierce grapple, back into the disorienting array of snow and burning, melting trash and plastic. Something is searing Ellie’s jacket but she doesn’t have time to worry about it; she can’t let this gun come out.

She’s trying to wrestle the gun away when, all at once, she’s blasted with a fist; stars erupt behind her eyes and she releases the gun reflexively; instantly, there are hands wrapped tight around her neck, and they’re dragging her closer to the melting trash can, trying to force her face into contact with the dripping strands of plastic. The world smells like gasoline and rubber and noxious fumes. Ellie struggles against the grip, tries to find purchase on the ground under her but her boots just slip against the wet, trampled snow. Her lungs are begging for air and the heat against her face is unbearable--

“ _ Just fucking tell me where she is-- _ ”

Ellie gets a hold of the knife in her pocket. Feels the satisfying  _ snap _ as it opens up.

She thrusts the blade upward as hard as she can.

The hands release her and she gulps down air, scrambles away from the burning wreckage on the lawn. She’s covered in blood, but it’s not hers.

The dark-haired militia girl is scrambling in the opposite direction, clutching her face, leaving a trail of scarlet in the snow. 

“ _ Fuck _ …” She’s muttering in a fractured, pained voice, “ _ Shit...shit….” _

She falls down to her knees in the snow, hands pressed over her left eye, and the blood pumps slowly between her fingers, traces long paths down the curve of her face, drips from her chin.

She looks up at Ellie, pale and battered and bleeding, face wrenched up in agony. 

“ _ Please _ ,” She says to Ellie, all pretense of toughness or bravado gone, “I am fucking  _ begging _ ...just tell me where she is. I just want to know she’s fucking okay, that’s all I’ve...that’s all I’ve ever fucking wanted...Jesus Christ, my fucking eye…”

Something clicks into place for Ellie. Some kind of understanding. Because she sees herself there, in a uniform, bleeding in the snow, piloted by rage, wounded by the gaping absences in her life. Here’s what she would be if not for Joel--wild and unable to comprehend being anything else. Unable to see any life that might be better, might be stable and normal and real. 

And she gets it, what Dina said earlier--that they deserve a shot at this, at this thing that she and Dina take for granted--the time and space they have here in Jackson to fuck things up and fix them and fuck them up again, to be as close to  _ kids  _ as it’s possible to get in this world anymore.

“Clinic,” Ellie says, “Three buildings up, on the right--but give me the gun--”

Ellie steps forward, and Phinn flinches away, raises the gun up, points it at Ellie. But her hand is shaking.

Ellie holds up her hands.

“We didn’t hurt her,” Ellie says slowly, “We helped her. Now give me the gun and go find her.”

Phinn wavers, staring hard at Ellie through the eye not covered by her free hand, not drenched in blood. She’s losing too much of it--blood. She’s already pale, trembling.

Phinn lowers the gun, drops it into the snow. She stands up with some effort, sways a little on the spot. They look hard at each other, and Ellie steps forward, grabs the gun from the ground, snaps the magazine out.

"Leave the fucking axe, too," Ellie says.

Phinn looks down at the hatchet dropped near her feet.

"Over my dead fuckin' body--"

" _Leave it_ ," Ellie says forcefully. 

Phinn hesitates--but steps away from it. Leaves it in the snow. She lets her hand down, and--it’s not good. It’s not good at all. Ellie doesn’t feel guilty, because the little shit was trying to choke her to death, but it’s not easy to look at. It's a deep, angry trench drawn straight over the left eye. The extent of the damage is hard to determine, because it's just a pulpy, bloody mess. 

“You’re just gonna let me go?” Phinn asks, “After all this?”

“You gonna fucking hurt anybody else?” Ellie asks sharply.

“I just want Vi. That’s all.”

“Fine. She doesn’t wanna go back,” Ellie warns her, “But she does want  _ you _ . Do whatever you want with that.”

Phinn takes a hesitant step back, watching Ellie distrustfully, then another. She turns and walks in the direction of the clinic, unsteady on her feet and still trailing blood.

Ellie lets her go--for now. Because there’s the scent of something else in the air--the acrid smell of wood smoke. Lots of it. Too much of it. Something is wrong, and Ellie knows it before she sees it, knows it down in her gut:

Jackson is burning.   
  



	9. One Thing Right

**_PHINN._ **

_ Don’t go out tonight I put a spell on you there’s a bad moon rising there’s a bad moon rising don’t go out it’s bound to take your life _

She can’t tell anymore if the words, the rhythms and melodies--she can’t tell if they’re in her head, or if she’s really singing them, or both. But she’s holding onto them, clinging to the noise and the sounds and trying to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, but it’s so hard, it’s so fucking hard because the pain is like nothing she’s every felt before--just a screaming, throbbing cacophony radiating from the left side of her face. 

The world has gone half-dark, become a confusing and disorienting blend of the two images being fed to her brain: one sharp and clear, one dull and comprised of nothing but amorphous shapes painted all in hues of red and black.

She thinks she’s going the right way. She isn’t sure. Somewhere ahead, there’s a bright flare of light, red and orange and flickering against the low, snow-laden clouds overhead--their dining hall, up in flames. So where the fuck is she? Where the fuck is Vi? 

She slips, hits the ground hard; the blood drips from her mangled eye socket, stains the snow under her, and she has to get back up--she has to, there just aren’t any other options. She’s so close now, she has to be--

But she’s so fucking tired.

_ Better run through the jungle better run _

She pushes hard against the ground and it feels like her bones are made of lead, but she gets her feet back under her, lifts a shaking hand to clear away some of the blood, to try to make it easier to see, but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps. 

She can’t breathe and she can feel the cold seeping through her clothes, down into her skin; everything hurts and she feels suddenly, terribly, disastrously  _ alone.  _ She feels small and shaken and  _ hurt _ and all at once, it’s as if all the fear she’s ever ignored, the terror she’s suppressed and shut away--it comes back, hits her with full force. 

_ I can hear the voice of rage and ruin I can hear the voice I put a spell on you _

She presses her hands to her face and there’s just a mess of sticky, still-flowing blood and she doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to fix this, doesn’t know how she got here--doesn’t know how this situation spiraled so completely out of fucking control--

_ Whoa thought it was a nightmare but it’s all true there’s a bad moon a bad moon _

She keeps one hand over the injured eye, blocks out the confusing, shattered images it’s trying to send her--and maybe that helps. Maybe. She pushes forward through the snow, guided by only half an image of what’s ahead of her.

“VI!” She calls out into the dark, because she doesn’t know what to do, only knows that for the first time in a long time, she’s frightened, and she only has one safe place left in the world, “ _ Violetta!” _

There are other voices now, rising up in the dark, voices of alarm and urgency. But she ignores them, tries to just keep her feet moving, hopes it’s leading her to Vi, hopes and hopes and hopes because she’s it, she’s the only thing that can make this better, the only thing that fix any of this--

_ I know the end is coming soon _

“ _ Violetta!”  _ She calls again, and she knows it’s stupid--she has no idea where she is. No reason to think Violetta could hear her. But it’s almost reflexive, instinctive, to call for her. 

She sinks back into the snow. Sits there on her knees.

_ Hope you got your things together one eye is taken for an eye.  _

Did she take an eye? No, she doesn’t think so, but things are getting foggier, harder to keep straight. She didn’t take an eye, but she did do some fucked up things. Has done all kinds of fucked up things. Things she knew couldn’t be right. Maybe this is what she deserves. All of it. The fucked up eye. Losing Vi. Maybe losing her home and everything she’s ever known. Losing her mom and her dad and Adelaide.

Because maybe she didn’t take an eye, but she did cut off a guy’s leg. 

_ The devil’s on the loose. _

Holy fuck, she did that. She let him bleed to death in an empty factory, a cement tomb.  _ She cut off his leg. _

Maybe he deserved it. Maybe she had her reasons. But it cost her something, didn’t it? She cut off his leg, and cut out some part of herself in the process. Left it behind in that factory, too. 

And she’s still not even gonna finish what she started. 

Fuck.

It’s so cold now. 

A door slams open somewhere ahead, but Phinn can’t look up. Can only look down at the snow between her hands. 

_ “No, I know I heard her, Adelaide--I did--let go--” _

Boots, crunching toward her through the snow, running.

“Phinn?  _ PHINN!” _

Someone drops down in front of her, falls heavy into the snow and takes her face in their hands and she can’t even fight them, doesn’t have it left in her.

“Phinn, Jesus Christ-- _ Phinn--” _

She finally looks up, isn’t sure if she can trust the fractured bit of her vision she has left. But it looks like her, like her honey-colored hair and her wide, hazel eyes and there’s that little knick on her chin where she fell in a creek once, back even before they left home. Back before all of this even began. A million lifetimes ago.

“Vi?” She asks quietly, “Violetta?”

“Yes, Phinn--”

“I found you,” Phinn says, starts to laugh, “I found you. I fucking found you…”

Phinn grabs her hands, holds them against her own face, just doesn’t want her to leave, doesn’t want her to let go, doesn’t want to move ever again. This is it, this is as good a place as she’s ever going to be again--here in the snow, with Vi in front of her.

“I found you,” Phinn says in a whispered, half-delirious rush, “I found you and you’re fucking alive, I knew it...I goddamn knew it…”

“Phinn…” Vi whispers, “You’re hurt, you have to let me see, let me help, please--”

“No,” Phinn says, shakes her head, pulls away, “No, we just have to...we have to go--”

“ _ Phinn--”  _ Violetta pries gently at her hand, “ _ Let me help.” _

Phinn closes her eyes, or at least what’s left of them; she closes them tight and when she speaks, it’s in a voice that isn’t hers, because it’s too small and broken and scared--it can’t be hers.

“It’s fucked, Vi,” She says, “It’s completely fucked-- _ I’m _ completely fucked--”

“Phinn,” Vi says, and she’s calm but there’s urgency there, “Just let me see.”

Phinn pulls her hand away, and even with only half her vision, she can see it flicker over Vi’s face, a deep, wild kind of grief.

“You’re gonna be okay, Phinn,” She says, but she’s crying, silent tears streaming down her face, “You’re gonna be okay--” 

She leans in, puts her forehead to Phinn’s and somehow that single act of affection is enough to break whatever was left in Phinn. She lets Violetta wrap her arms around her, lets Vi whisper it in her ear, over and over, that she’s going to be okay, because even if it’s a lie--it’s a lie she wants to hear.

“Phinn…” There’s another voice, and a touch on her shoulder.

She looks up to find Adelaide there. 

Fucking  _ Adelaide.  _

“Phinn, come back to the clinic, there’s--we can--someone can help, c’mon--” Adelaide grabs her arm.

Phinn pulls away, disentangles herself from Violetta. 

“You really  _ are _ alive,” Phinn says, “I didn’t even really believe it…”

“Phinn--”

“At least if you were dead, it meant you didn’t have a choice,” Phinn goes on, and somehow the flaring anger makes it easier, to find her feet again, to steady herself in the snow, even through the orchestra of pain in her head, “But you  _ did _ have a choice, and you left us-- _ me _ \--in that fucking place…”

“I was always gonna come back for you, Phinn,” Adelaide says, “You have to believe that--”

“How long were you gonna wait?” Phinn says with a mirthless laugh, “How long were you gonna fuck around here with these people, before you came back for me? Huh?”

“This is  _ your  _ fault,” Phinn says, pushes Adelaide away when the older girl tries to grab her arm again, “You let them do this to me--fucking  _ look at me, Adelaide _ . I’m--not even a fucking person, goddammit…”

She winces presses the hand over her eye again because it’s too much, there’s too much going on and her head is a mess--it’s fucking true, that Adelaide left her, knowing what they would do, knowing the kind of life she would have. Knowing what parts of herself she would have to give up to survive there.

“I don’t have anything left,” Phinn says, because she doesn’t need to ask Vi, doesn’t need to because she already knows, has known for a long time--

Vi isn’t coming home with her.

“You left me, and I fucked up... _ everything,”  _ The tears burn against her wounded face, “You left me, and now I’m--I’m just one of  _ them. _ Aren’t I?”

“Phinn-- _ no, _ ” Violetta jumps up from the snow, reaches for her, “You’re not--you’re not one of them--”

“I am,” Phinn says, but she doesn’t pull away, “I’m a fucking  _ animal _ . I can’t--I can’t even tell you what I did, I can’t even say it, what I did to Daniel--”

“It doesn’t matter-- _ it doesn’t fucking matter, Phinn, look at me-- _ ” Violetta takes her face again, “Stay here, with me. Stay with me, Phinn, and we’ll figure all this out. Fucking  _ please _ \--stay with me, and we’ll...we’ll sing in the kitchen and I’ll read every night and we’ll listen to the windchimes on the porch in the evening and we’ll...we’ll be  _ together.  _ Every day. Just you and me. You’re not one of  _ them _ \--you’re...you’re  _ me.  _ And I’m  _ you. _ Because you have to know, Phinn, after all this time--you have to know how much I fucking love you.”

They’ve never said it. Not like that. They’ve used stupid Christmas gifts, and stolen nights of reading late into the night; they’ve used looks and euphemisms and unspoken understandings to try to say it for as long as Phinn can remember. But they’ve never  _ said it. _

“I love you, too,” Phinn says, and she touches Vi’s hair, the way she’s wanted to for years, maybe forever.

But her hands are covered in blood, and now there’s blood streaked there, in the warm, gold length of Vi’s hair. 

Everywhere she goes, there’s blood.

Everything she touches turns to blood.

“So  _ stay _ ,” Vi says with unfettered desperation, “ _ Please.” _

Phinn looks into her face, tries to make sure she gets a good look, as good a look as she can get now; tries to memorize every shape, every achingly perfect imperfection.

“It’s...it’s a good place?” Phinn asks, “Is it safe? Are they strong? Smart?”

Violetta nods.

“They’re good people,” Adelaide says from behind Vi, “They’re survivors, but they’re  _ good. _ At the very least, they try to be. I’m not sure there’s much else a person can do anymore.”

Phinn nods, takes a step back, wipes more of the blood from her face. Her head feels remarkably clear, because she knows what has to be done, and it’s going to hurt worse than anything else that’s happened tonight--but there aren’t any other options left.

She reaches down into her boot, pulls out the spare revolver tucked there.

“Phinn--” Adelaide says, alarmed, “Phinn, what the fuck--”

Phinn levels the revolver at her.

“Just stay back,” She tells Adelaide, she sighs, exhausted, and adds, “...both of you.”

“Phinn...why?” Violetta says, soft and devastating.

Phinn can hardly meet her eyes, but she does, looks at her down the length of the gun.

“I don’t belong here,” She says in a shaking but sure voice, “You know it, Vi. You knew, the moment you made this choice, what it meant.”

Vi doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to argue, just continues looking back at Phinn with pleading eyes.

“I thought...I thought at first it was about you choosing these people, this life, over me,” Phinn says slowly, thoughtfully, “But it’s not that. It’s you choosing  _ you _ over me. Choosing yourself. Choosing to live. And...that...I think that’s the right choice. I really do.”

“Phinn, it’s not like that--”

“It’s exactly that, and that’s okay. It really is. I want you to choose  _ you.  _ I just...don’t have a place in that equation. In that story.”

There’s a long moment of silence, a long stretch of understanding between them, and for a second it looks like Vi might make a run at her anyway, might try to pull the gun away--but if she’s thinking of doing it, her plans are interrupted by someone else running straight into the scene.

“MAXWELL,” Morrison calls, “Maxwell, Jesus--you’re fucking eye--oh, shit...you found them. You found them  _ both.” _

Phinn keeps her eye on Vi and Adelaide, only spares a glance for Morrison.

“Yeah,” She says, “Yeah, I found them--”

“Walker,” Morrison gestures at Vi, “Glad you’re alive--Maxwell, toss her some cuffs so we can get the prisoner transported back to the Core--I’m ready to get the fuck out of here, and we need to get you to one of the medics--”

“Walker is staying,” Phinn says, “Walker wants to stay here, in Jackson.”

Morrison looks stricken, glances between Vi and Phinn as if trying to tell if this is a joke.

“Well--she  _ can’t _ ,” Morrison says, “That’s felony abandonment, that’s--that’s punishable by death, on the spot--”

“I don’t care,” Vi says, “I’m not leaving--”

A flash of startled anger crosses his face and he reaches for his gun.

A gunshot cracks through the night.

Morrison drops. Dead.

Violetta stares at Phinn, eyes wide and startled.

Phinn lowers the still-smoking gun, looks back at Vi.

“That’s it,” She says, “That’s the last thing I can give you. A chance at this. A real chance. I’m gonna go back, tell them what happened here, so they don’t send anyone else looking for you. You’ll be dead to the Core. Dead to the whole NUS. You understand? Tell me you understand.”

Violetta nods.

Phinn walks to Morrison’s body, reaches into his belt--pulls out a flare gun. Checks the loaded ammunition.

“Adelaide,” She says, “Take care of her. Take care of her better than you took care of me.”

“You don’t have to do this, Phinn,” Adelaide says, “You can stay. Whatever else happens, we’ll figure it out--”

“Just shut up and let me do one thing right in my whole fucking life,” She says as she collects the other flare ammunition from Morrison.

She straightens up, pauses, looks back at Vi.

“You’re...you’re gonna get lots of books, right? You’re gonna read every single night now? And no one’s gonna stop you?”

“Shelves and shelves of books,” Vi says with a heavy smile, “Gonna read them every stupid night.”

Phinn nods, returns the smile, “Good.”

She lifts the flare gun up, straight into the sky, fires.

A red flare blazes overhead. Their signal for  _ retreat and regroup. _

She reckons she’s got enough in her to make it to the rendezvous point. There’ll be a medic there. Maybe they can save the eye. Maybe she’ll lose it. That seems inconsequential now. From there, back to the Core, so she can tell them what happened. How Vi and Morrison tried to confront Adelaide, and all three were killed in the scuffle.

And then there’s just the rest of her life, doing what she does best. Doing the only thing she knows how to do. Being a soldier.

That first step away from Vi is the hardest. The second isn’t easy either. But then she’s walking away, turning her back on Violetta and Adelaide and making her way through the snow. 

There’s yelling somewhere nearby, a fire still burning bright and fierce, but that just gives her the cover she needs to disappear. 

\--

As the sun comes up, she looks down into the valley where Jackson lies, spread out and smoking but still very much  _ there. _ The medic, Carmichael, pushes a set of hefty pills into her palm. 

“We’ll do a bandage change in two hours,” He says, “Take these now, to stop any infection.”

She nods.

“And, uh--we’re ready to go whenever you are, ma’am.”

“God, don’t fucking call me that, Carmichael.”

“With Morrison gone--you’re the next in command--”

“Fucking hell…” She murmurs under her breath.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“What did I  _ just  _ say? For the love of God, get everyone ready, we’re leaving. I’ll...I’ll be there in just a minute.”

He leaves her standing on the ridge. She just wants to look at it for one more minute. Wants to memorize it. Because she knows she’s going to forget, that’s it’s going to seem only half-real in her memory one day. And she wants to be able to see it, really  _ see  _ it, when she thinks about Vi.

There’s a piece of her, somewhere, that tries to push forward a song. Tries to pull up words, and melodies, and rhythms. 

But she doesn’t feel like singing.

Isn’t sure she’ll ever feel like singing again.   
  



	10. The Way Things Might've Been

**_DINA._ **

That night is still a hazy blur in her memory. Ellie, busted up and bleeding, waking her-- _ Dina, there’s a fire.  _ Coming outside to find the night lit up and filled with thick, black smoke. The sounds of panic and alarm echoing through the dark. A fire raging out there, chewing up their dining hall. one of their central buildings.

Maybe it was the lingering effects of the concussion, or just her outright exhaustion, but it had hardly even seemed like reality. More like a bizarre, surreal dream. Black soot and ash mixed with the snow on the ground and the roar of the fire was deafening.

But they had contingencies for this. They had plans. It didn’t take long for lines to be formed, between the dining hall and the water tanks. Buckets passed from one to the next, thrown onto the beastly inferno. But they had more than that, too--water tanks on wagons, armed with hoses. Obviously there was sheer terror for everyone involved, but in the aftermath Tommy couldn’t stop talking about it--how his crude firefighting regiment  _ hadn’t  _ been a waste of time or resources. 

And he was right, Dina had to admit. And so did Maria, and Ellie, and basically anyone who would stand still long enough for Tommy to bring it up.

And as the flames had died down, and she handed over the last bucket, Ellie pulled her back, away from the smoke and flames, and they watched. Ellie tangled her fingers in Dina’s and stared on the wreckage with some combination of awe and fear and relief that maybe it was over and the danger had passed.

Dina suspected they’d gotten off easy. This clearly hadn’t been an accident--someone had been here. Had this been the attack they’d been expecting? In that light, a single damaged building seemed like too much to ask for--why hadn’t there been more carnage? 

The answer came as the sun broke over the swelling ridge of the mountains and washed the valley in the thin, finespun light of dawn. 

They found Adelaide and Violetta together, coated in black soot like all the rest, helping wherever they could to put out the fire. Working alongside the others seamlessly to protect, heal, repair. Only--Violetta was covered in more than soot and smoke. There was blood, still, in her hair, on her hands, her clothes. 

Dina stopped her, made her put down the empty bucket she was refilling. Violetta was pale under all the ash, and there was a tremor in her hands--but when she spoke, when she told the whole story, it was without waver. Like a solider delivering a report. Factual and straightforward.

“She halted the attack, the search for Adelaide. Left with them, to make sure they think we’re gone, so no one comes looking for us again.”

“Well--when is she coming back?” Dina asked, confused.

It was the only point so far at which Violetta showed any real affect, the only time her wall faltered. Standing there with her feet in the snow and her face marked in blood and soot, she showed a quiet, barely contained kind of devastation.

“I don’t know,” She said, so quietly she could hardly be heard over the continued shouting around them, “I don’t think she’s coming back at all.”

“Why the hell  _ not?”  _ Dina demanded, and Ellie laid a hand on her arm, as if to pacify her, to stop any further questions.

“I don’t know,” Violetta said, and the dam really started to break, the tears streaking through the blood and ash, “I really don’t. She was right--I chose myself. I think maybe I knew she wouldn’t--couldn’t...I don’t know. But I had to do it, didn’t I? I had to choose  _ me _ , I couldn’t...I couldn’t go back again, right…?”

Adelaide stepped in then, wiped a tired arm across her face--laid a hand on Violetta’s shoulder. 

“You made the right choice,” She told Violetta, “Nothing selfish about choosing to  _ live.  _ You did everything you could for her. And she...she’s doing everything she can for  _ you. _ ”

Violetta leaned in against Adelaide then, broken and lost to grief and guilt.

Dina and Ellie exchanged looks; Ellie, carrying a scattered collection of burns near her eyes, a busted lip, a bruised cheek--but otherwise whole, and  _ here.  _

And it hits Dina, the enormity of what they have. That fact that they even have the opportunity to be ambiguous and unsure about this, that they have room and time to grow into each other, to find their footing and figure all of this out. That they’ve been given a precious, protected bubble of space here, in Jackson--space to come together, and drift apart, and come back again. What a fucking miracle, in a world torn about at the seams, that they’ve been able to do this, to--

Dina hesitates in her train of thought, looks hard at Ellie there in the morning light. Ellie meets her gaze for a moment.

That they’ve been able to fall in love.

And that’s the truth of it, isn’t it? She looks at Ellie and she knows, down in the center of all that she is, that she’s in love with her. That euphemisms aren’t going to cut it anymore.  _ Like  _ and  _ want  _ and  _ need _ have been fine until now, but--those in themselves have been a kind of luxury, haven’t they? Easing into this idea, wasting this time they could really, truly have together--it’s not a thing everyone out there in the world is going to get, she’s realizing.

And she’ll have to do something about it. Soon.

\--

**_ELLIE._ **

Dina reaches out, presses the little cotton pad against Ellie’s face and it hurts like an absolute bitch. Ellie winces, pulls in air between her teeth, flinches away.

“Oh, c’mon--” Dina prods with a gentle laugh, “Don’t make this harder than it is. I have a vested interest in making sure this doesn’t scar, you know.”

“Aren’t you the one who says scars are sexy?” Ellie asks, turning back toward her to allow this horrible fucking process to continue.

Dina is careful though, and gentle, and Ellie uses the opportunity to watch her face, the way her eyes flash like bronze when the light hits them just right. The deep, heavy thoughtfulness there, somewhere behind those eyes--something has been on her mind, and Ellie wishes more than ever that she could just see it, could just know what’s happening there in her head.

“They  _ are,”  _ Dina says, “But, y’know...I also kinda like your face the way it is.”

“Hm,” Ellie says, gives a small smile, “I kinda like your face, too.”

Dina laughs lightly, says, “Good.”

A moment of quiet passes between them, and Dina continues tending the scattered burns and cuts across Ellie’s face.

“That kid put up a fight,” Ellie says quietly, thinking.

“I can tell,” Dina says.

“I hurt her,” Ellie says, watching Dina’s face, “I think I hurt her pretty badly.”

“She was trying to hurt  _ you _ pretty badly.”

Ellie thinks about her, the broken girl on the ground, smothered in blood and pain and fear and rage. Hurting in ways she couldn’t understand, ways with which she simply was equipped to cope.

“I think I could’ve been her,” Ellie says, “If I’d stayed in Boston. Become a soldier. Never met Joel.”

Dina stops, sits back in her own chair.

“I think…” Ellie continues haltingly, “I think maybe Joel saved me from more than he knows. More than I know.”

Dina nods, gives a small shrug, “Yeah. Maybe.”

Ellie sighs, “God, does this mean I have to, like, talk to him?”

“Kinda sounds like you need to have a heart-to-heart with him, yeah,” Dina says.

“I hate heart-to-hearts,” Ellie mumbles, “I hate talking.”

“I know,” Dina sighs, “I know you do. But I think you should try.”

Ellie pushes a hand through her hair, exhales heavily.

“I still don’t know if I can forgive him, if I can...get past what he did. But...I’ll think about it.”

“That’s a start,” Dina says, “Now--you have to hold still--this salve is the important part--”

Ellie reluctantly follows her orders.

“Hey, what’s going on with Violetta, by the way?” She asks as Dina leans forward again, applies a cool, soothing ointment to Ellie’s skin, “Is she...gonna be okay, do you think?”

“I think so,” Dina says, “We talked yesterday and I think I might have found the perfect thing for her, here in Jackson. She’s gonna lose it when I show her, I’m pretty sure.”

“Yeah?” Ellie asks, interest piqued, “What--?”

Dina sounds a little too satisfied with herself as she says smugly, “ _The library_.”

\--

**_PHINN._ **

Is this the right building? She can’t really be sure. Everything looks different now. Different than it had that night, in the dark and snow and ash, with her eyes full of blood and her body battered and bruised.

This building looks right. It’s small, looks like maybe it used to be a store of some kind, a million years ago. It’s got these big windows right in front and Phinn can see the rows and rows of shelves inside, piled neatly with book after book. In the window, she can also see her reflection--dark hair too long, pulled into a low knot at the knape of her neck; and, of course, the black square of leather over her left eye, which doesn’t even fully cover the scar.

She’s long since gotten past feeling self-conscious over it. If anything, it makes the new recruits terrified of her, and that’s not without its merits. But for the first time in a lot of years, she really sees it, thinks about it, tries to imagine what other people think when they see her. 

Tries to imagine what  _ she’ll  _ think.

“ _ Left a good job in the city,”  _ A small voice sings from nearby, “ _ Workin’ for the man every night and day--” _

There’s a small girl, maybe seven or eight years old, on a bench just near the door of the building. She has a long fall of honey-gold hair, and a notebook open in her lap.

“ _ \--never lost a minute of sleepin’, worryin’ about the way things might’ve been--” _

Phinn takes an uncertain step forward, and there’s a strange sense of euphoria in her, an amazement and wonder that she couldn’t have put words to even if she tried.

“ _ Big wheel, keep on turnin’,”  _ She supplies the chorus in a horse voice, “ _ Proud Mary keep on burnin’--” _

The girl looks up, and her warm, hazel eyes are surprised, but wary. She pauses, holding her pencil over the page of her notebook.

_ “ _ How do you know that song?” The girl asks, “Nobody knows that song.”

“Are you kidding? That’s, like, the  _ best _ song,” Phinn says, sits down on the far end of the bench, “How do  _ you _ know that song?’

“My mom sings it all the time,” The girl says, “She knows all kinds of weird songs.”

“Huh,” Phinn says, smiles-- _ really  _ smiles--for the first time in as long as she can remember, “She sounds like a cool mom.”

“No way,” The girl says, “She’s all  _ books this _ and  _ books that _ and  _ Maxwell, go do your reading-- _ ugh.”

“You don’t like reading?” Phinn asks.

“It’s  _ fine _ ,” She says, “I just don’t like the boring stuff. I like the fighting ones alright. But the ones about the  _ love  _ and the  _ romance--” _

“Blech,” They both make the same disgusted noise.

“I hear you,” Phinn says, “I think you’ve got the right idea.”

“I haven’t seen you before,” She says, “Who are you?”

“Oh, um--I’m Phinn,” Phinn says, and offers her hand out, “Phinn Maxwell.”

The girl laughs, sticks her hand out, shakes Phinn’s.

“What’s so funny?” Phinn asks, but the sound is infectious, and she finds she’s laughing even without knowing the joke yet.

“ _ Maxwell-- _ ” She says, “That’s  _ my  _ name. Well, just Max. Nobody calls me Maxwell--except my mom, when I’m in trouble.”

Phinn smiles, “Are you in trouble a lot, Max?”

“No,” She says defensively, thinks about it, says, “Maybe.”

“I used to get in trouble a lot, too.”

“Is that what happened to your eye?”

Phinn pauses, thinks about it.

“Kinda, yeah. I’m, um--I’m looking for someone. Do you think you could help me? They said she runs the library here.”

“Well--my mom is the only one who runs the library.”

“Oh,” Phinn says with a nod, “Well...do you think you could introduce me? I, uh...I’ve been waiting a really long time to meet her.”

Max seems to consider it, then shrugs, lays down her notebook and pencil. She climbs off the bench, motions for Phinn to follow her.

“Sure, I guess,” Max says, “Come on, then. She’s just gonna bore you with all the books though--books all day, all the time, ugh--”

Phinn only hesitates for a moment, watching as Max opens up the door, stands back, waits impatiently for Phinn. Her stomach is in knots, her heart pattering feverishly inside her chest, and she’s afraid--but for once, it’s a good kind of fear. A fear she’s ready to embrace.

“Hey,” Max says, struggling to keep the heavy door open, “Are you ready to come inside or do you need a few more days to think about it?”

Phinn stands up, laughs. 

“Hold your damn horses, kid,” She says, “I’m ready.”

\--

THE END (?)   
  



End file.
